LOVE AND LIFE 
AND PEACE 


i ,: : : ■/:;!; |^- 


BOLTON HALL 

Introduction by Bishop Huntington 




Class 

Book_ 

Copyright 1^^. 



CQPyRIGHT DEPOSm 



^ 



LIFE, AND LOVE 
AND PEACE 



LIFE, AND LOVE 
AND PEACE 



BY 

BOLTON HALL 



Author of "Three Acres and Liberty,'* 

*'A Little Land and a 

Living," etc. 



with introduction by 
the late 

BISHOP HUNTINGTON 



^ 



NEW YORK 

THE ARCADIA PRESS 

1909 



Be 43/ 



Copyright, 1909, 
By the ARCADIA PRESS 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cor-i^.« •^ •" -^ 

iUN 1^ liiiiii 

wk Copyrurnt LMfz-^ ^ 



Dedicated by permission to 

Ealph Waldo Trine 

Sower of Seed and Cultivator of the Earth, 

materially and mentally, 

by his friend 

Bolton Hall 



CONTENTS 

Part I^Life 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

I. Primitive Life 19 

II. Development . . .... 27 

III. Mental Attainment . . . . .34 

IV. Liberty 40 

V. False Ideas ©p Life 48 

VI. Desires 54 

Part II — Love 
VII. The Law of Life . . . . .71 
VIII. The Higher Life . . . . . .88 

IX. Unity 95 

X. Freedom through Unity . . . .109 

XL Duty 114 

XII. The Beauty of Man 119 

Part III— Peace 

XIII. How to Attain Love 129 

XIV. The Door of Happiness .... 141 



CONTENTS 6 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XV. Interior and Economic Peace . . .152 

XVI. The Voice of Truth l6l 

XVII. The Triumph of Life 180 

XVIII. Conclusion 190 

Appendixes 

I. Tolstoy on Life 195 

II. Control of Children 205 

III. An Attempt at Practice 226 

IV. A New Movement 243 

V. At-one-ment 279 



INTRODUCTION 

Diocese op Central New York, 
210 Walnut Place, Syracuse, N. Y. 

My Dear Sir: 

Personally, I believe, the reading of your book 
has done me good. Certainly I ought to be bet- 
ter now for it. But I want to say — what may 
surprise you — ^that, with the exception of perhaps 
half a dozen sentences, I am confident that the 
whole of it might be deUvered from the pulpit of 
nearly every or any one of the Churches in the 
Communion to which I belong, without objection, 
or even any suggestion of incongruity. In vigor, 
beauty, or originality, many passages might be 
noticeable, but very few indeed could be consid- 
ered erroneous, heretical, or strange. Some ques- 
tion would perhaps arise as to the real meaning 
of certain expressions relating to ante-natal hu- 
man existence. It may be that you hold a psycho- 
logical or ontological theory more in harmony 



INTRODUCTION 10 

with theosophy than with Christianity. I see no 
sign of favor to re-incarnation. But, aside from 
such speculation, your work seems to me full of 
nourishment and inspiration, — for which I thank 
you. 

The two sentences I refer to pertain not to doc- 
trine but to critical judgment. I think they are 
unfair. (Note.*) One is where you say, "So- 
called Christians teach," etc. I know of no 
" Christian pessimists " who " say that there is 
no good in this life." To be sure, it is not clear 
who the "Christian pessimists" are; but I am 
very sure that there are many more pessimists 
(in the philosophical sense) outside of the 
Church than within it. 

The other sweeping statement is later; where 
what is asserted of *' Ecclesiastical Teachers " is 
far, too far, beyond the warrant of known facts 
to be safe or just. It makes me feel, as Matthew 
Arnold's " Literature and Dogma " did, that 
even in Christian lands and families the oppo- 
nents of the Church are not aware what the 

* Editor's Note — These two statements are taken di- 
rectly from Tolstoy's book on " Life." 



11 INTRODUCTION^ 

Church now teaches. Most of my long hfe I 
have been trying, poorly enough, to persuade 
men of what is on these pages of spiritual and 
ethical truths. 

Sincerely yours, 

F. D. Huntington. 



THE PURPOSE OF THE AUTHOR 

So many persons have written me saying how 
much happier a view of life they have gotten 
from a former httle book on these lines, that I 
have expanded it, and, in doing that, have re- 
written it entirely. So much of the work as is 
taken from Tolstoy is mostly from his difficult 
book " Of Life." 

I have attempted to outUne the inspired teach- 
ings of the unorthodox, which are essentially 
one, eternal and unchangeable. 

The message of these latter-day prophets is 
the message of Jesus: that the Kingdom of 
Heaven is within ourselves, and is consequently 
as attainable for everyone here and now. 

I hope that these teachings may not now be 
thought of as my opinions or my philosophy: 
that which is of any one person is partial and 
misleading ; that which comes of the Divine prin- 
ciple alone is the universal Truth. 

The ideas put forth may seem hke folly to 

13 



THE PURPOSE 14, 

OF THE AUTHOR 

some readers, but who is there that will not get 
good by stopping to think what the true object of 
life may be, and how we can "overcome the 
world," here upon earth? 

It is proper to say that Bishop Huntington's 
introduction was written before the revision was 
complete, so that he pronounced only on its gen- 
eral tenor. 

If the reader opposes his mind to its message, 
this book may interest him, but it cannot help 
him. Those who find here anything that really 
helps them or that they cannot help objecting 
to, are invited to write to me. 

Bolton Hall 

56 PiNB Street, New York. 



Con0olation 



The blood was trickling from my heart, and I said 
that God had needlessly torn It with his hands. Friends 
came to bring me comfort, — comfort for me! They said, 
"Think n1)t of your grief"; but grief gnawed In my 
brain. 

The World said, " Here are pleasures— lay these to 
your heart." But my heart quivered at their touch. 

A Wise Man said, " Nought happens needlessly," and 
I answered, " Nought but this." 

Science cried to me, " Evil does not exist," and yet 
I writhed In agony. 

Hope said, "There Is another World"; I answered, 
" it is long to wait and far to seek, and nothing can be 
known of It." 

The Church said, "1_ook thou to God"; I said 
" Should I seek the brutal God who tortures me? " 

Satan whispered me, " Curse God and die/^ and I said, 
" I have cursed God, but death comes not to me." 

The World toiled past and took no note of me, and 
time flowed in Its course. 

Then said a still small voice: " The ways of God are 
one. You have tasted of the bitterness of life; will 
you not also taste the sweet? " ! said, " Who will 
show me how? " And Reason answered, " I," and 
Sympathy answered, " I," and Nature answered, " I," 
and Peace and I was comforted, finding the Joy of Life. 



PAUT I— LIFE 



'Tis a strange world we came to, you and I, 
Whence no man knows, and surely none knows why. 

Why we remain — a harder question still, 
And still another — whither when we die? 

Into this life of cruel wonder sent. 
Without a word to tell us what it meant. 

Sent back again without a reason^why — 
Birth, life and death — 'twas all astonishment. 

— Le Gallienne's Rubaiyat. 



CHAPTER I 

PRIMITIVE LIFE 

LIFE cannot yet be defined in words that the 
mind can understand, neither can the soul, 
nor immortality, nor God, nor birth, which we 
call the beginning of Life; nor can we define 
death, which in equally incomprehensible lan- 
guage, we call the end of life. Each individual 
comes to some understanding of what life is, 
through himself; knows another's joys through 
his own; knows another's sufferings through 
what he has himself suffered, but he knows what 
the soul is only through nameless emotions that 
seem to be connected with his body and with the 
universe about him; and each conceives of God 
in his own ways and makes his mental picture of 
God from his own wants and fears. 

From the moment of the miraculous birth of 
the body of man to the moment of strange and 
mysterious death, man lives physically, mentally, 

19 



LIFE, AND 20 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

and spiritually; he suffers and enjoys, and from 
his experiences gains powers of intellect and 
vision of soul, or he submerges both and post- 
pones his arrival upon the plane of knowing or 
complete Life. Physically at birth man is the 
most helpless of creatures, crying in startled 
tones as the strange cold atmosphere chills the 
tender, warm body, so suddenly severed from 
the flesh of his flesh and the blood of his blood; 
impressionable, capable, supremely selfish, eligi- 
ble, he comes. The measurer — ^man, is endowed 
with power to perceive, recollect, reason, imagine, 
invent, filled with inherited tendencies, receiving 
and carrying with him, to help or hinder, the en- 
vironment of his ancestors and of theirs and of 
all that preceded them. So " he goes forth a 
child " to battle or submit, to serve or master, not 
knowing, to know; his body, hungering and 
naked, must be fed and clothed ; his mind, blank 
and uncultured, must be strengthened and 
trained; his soul, yearning and passionate, ever 
reaching for stars and a life beyond, must grope 
in darkness, schooled by the body and the brain; 
or be flooded with the knowledge that passeth 



21 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

understanding, as were Paul and Balzac and 
Whitman and maAy others. 

Incomplete and conscious only of his phy- 
sical surroundings, if he lives only upon the 
physical plane of hunger and thirst and passion- 
ate appetites of the body; incomplete and con- 
scious only of his power, if he lives yet higher 
upon the physical and the intellectual plane com- 
bined; but supreme when, complete, man under- 
stands his physical needs, supplies and masters 
them; feels the power of his mental resources, 
thinks, discovers, and controls the forces about 
him, and, in time, becomes conscious that, above 
and beyond the logic of philosophy, Life is per- 
petual and ever expanding, beautiful if complete 
and in harmony with the creative will and ruling 
force of the universe, and that death is not to the 
soul of him. He becomes conscious that the 
body and the mind have only carried him, 
the only real and developed and imperishable 
one, to lofty table-lands of vision and of hap- 
piness. 

Whatever we may say of man in his times of 
physical, mental, and spiritual experience, may 



LIFE, AND 22 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

truly be said of all men in any period of time; 
truly of the earliest and most helpless of human 
races of whatever color or kind; truly of those 
who lived when there were no weapons with which 
to destroy the hungry beasts that, obeying the 
law of their natures, sought food to sustain their 
lives; truly of those who lived before tools had 
been made, with which to make the earth yield 
foods and fruits, instead of weeds and thorns. 
It may be truly said of those who were born when 
kings claimed to have been divinely appointed 
and anointed to demand service on conditions of 
their own making ; truly of those who lived when 
feudal lords in castles in the high places levied 
tribute from every passer-by and sounded sum- 
mons to every servile ear to come to fealty or to 
death; truly to-day in our own country, regard- 
less of its form of government, where money and 
power is the ideal of society and where govern- 
ment itself exists, founded in force and sustained 
by economic or business forces, for maintaining 
individual ambitions and possessions; truly now 
when the hoot of the whistle hurries the wage- 
worker to toil that his master may secure and en- 



23 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

joy the larger part of the things he produces and 
surrenders. • 

On the physical plane man is a simple animal, 
instinctively self-seeking, and, as was divinely 
purposed, supplying the needs and desires of the 
body, loving as the lion or the wild deer loves, 
thirsting and hungering, pursuing and pursued; 
propagating and feeding in obedience to the 
laws of his natural being. On this plane he is 
natural, without sense of "sin," unconscious of 
relationship, divinely selfish, splendidly destined, 
for he could not live and advance if he did not 
take to himself the things he requires for his 
needs and life. His early and natural inquiries 
were as to his origin, just as they always are with 
children, and as he looked upon the earth and 
upon all its manifold life, he ascribed his own life 
and all life to fire and the sun, and worshipped 
them, and as naturally peopled the darkness with 
the terrible creatures of his imagination. Rec- 
ognizing subordinate forces for good or ill as 
they benefited or injured him, he made gods of 
the objects of the earth, the air, the ocean, and of 
the organs of the body, worshipping beetles and 



LIFE, AND 24, 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

men and women, sacrificing and suffering and 
carrying gifts to the ones who stood as mediators 
between him and his gods to receive and profit 
from the willing gifts of his heart and hands. 

As he has passed from one worship to another, 
he has destroyed his early gods and avoids men- 
tion of many early symbols of his primitive wor- 
ship, and in general does not know the origin of 
the symbols that at one time had a deep signifi- 
cance, but gazes worshipfuUy upon the church 
spire, the cross and the mitre-cap and sings the 
story of the Quest for the Holy Grail, without 
understanding how his spiritual worship goes 
back to the deepest and most wonderful experi- 
ences of his life and longings upon the physical 
plane of existence. Ever going forward from 
materialism and selfishness to consciousness of an 
always widening relationship, and coming again 
to a prof ounder reverence for the physical bodies 
and needs of women and men. 

And so we find primitive man separated into 
family groups and coming into tribal and na- 
tional relationships only as he slowly learned that 
by so associating with others he could best protect 



25 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

himself and supply his needs. His early battles 
were waged only to supply the things needed to 
satisfy his hunger or his thirst or to shelter or to 
clothe his body, and as he saw no difference in 
animals, except in form and appetite, and as the 
stranger was an enemy, he ate his human enemies 
slain in batfle; having no use for prisoners, he 
ate his captives without malice but with an ap- 
preciative appetite. As soon as weapons and 
tools made it possible to supply his wants in a 
larger way, he naturally found that a live cap- 
tive at work could do more for him than a dead 
one, so he instituted slavery, and all through the 
later ages the institution of slavery was justified 
by intellectual men in pulpit and press. In 
like manner the divine right of kings found a 
natural beginning and is still adhered to by 
many of those who want the higher things of 
life and seem honest in believing that the masses 
were made to serve, and that in some way we are 
always to have the poor among us.* So, too, the 
feudal system came in its order, natural and not 

* Note. — ^Jesus did not say that we are always to have the poor 
with us, only that we now have them always. See Mark 14:7. 



LIFE, AND 26 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

wholly bad, and these and other systems of living 
only passed away as they were outgrown and 
became oppressive enough to rouse a sufficient 
number of excluded ones who called aloud for 
Revolution until the old was overthrown, and a 
new form of exploitation instituted. 



CHAPTER II 

DEVELOPMENT 

THE invention of the early weapons and tools 
marvelously revolutionized the physical 
lives of the, early people, changed all their 
thought and philosophy and spiritual concepts. 
The invention of the steam engine and all the 
wonderful machinery that so rapidly followed in 
the nineteenth century, has changed the occupa- 
tions of millions, destroyed their superstitions, 
compelled co-operative industry, and lifted them 
higher in intellectual life. In unnumhered 
ways, it has clarified the visions of our prophets 
and poets, so that the longing for a complete 
life passionately surges as never before in the 
hearts of men and women. The fact that man 
on the physical plane is a child, always lov- 
able and lawless, having no consciousness of 
relationship, doing the things we call evil be- 
cause of the good that is within him, rather than 
because of total depravity which is not in him; 
and that on the intellectual plane, selfish nature 

27 



LIFE, AND 28 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

becomes or tends to become greedy because the 
incentive is to forge ahead with success as an ideal 
and the " law of the survival of the fittest " as an 
excuse, (being yet unconscious of relationship), 
makes man instead of a helpful brother of men, 
a conscienceless exploiter. For in his intellectual 
pantheon the modern man inscribes the names of 
patriots who have won battles, heroes who have 
seen flowing rivers of the blood of their child- 
like brothers who, equally ignorant, are easily 
led and misled. Honor and fame, not love and 
service, are what he strives for, as if glory could 
come to one at the cost of the many. The mod- 
ern man teaches those things : he writes for those 
things: he fights for those things. He builds 
navies for those things and maintains armies to 
preserve those things: he studies and enters 
politics for those things: he preaches and pays 
the preacher for preaching those things: he for- 
mulates laws and governments for the protection 
of his self -asserted right to widen his markets, 
strengthen his powers and guard the property 
he takes, by government or by intellect, from the 
natural owners. 



29 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

The physical man, deprived of access to the 
sources of life, shift out from his natural right to 
work and be independent, is driven to greater and 
greater suifering, and the less successful ones, 
striving also for power through the intellect, and 
failing, are driven back to the natural intuitions; 
then these unsuccessful ones always begin to 
deny the divine right of kings and laugh at and 
overthrow them, or they refuse to contribute to 
feudal lords or to answer their call to fealty, and 
learn to defy and destroy them. 

Thousands, also, who fail, fall back into the 
ranks of wage earners, and bring with them an 
intelligent explanation of conditions and find a 
soil ready for the seeds of an uplifting discon- 
tent. So now men are everywhere questioning 
the right of private ownership of land and of the 
things we need to make and use collectively ; just 
as the first machine first disheartened then en- 
slaved, the machines finally may emancipate the 
worker from degrading and excessive toil and 
enlarge his desire for life in the intellectual and 
spiritual planes of experience. 

The intellect which rules without soul develop- 



LIFE, AND 30 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ment is but little higher than the animal or 
physical life; indeed, men often become more 
cruel and more insatiate without the animal's 
natural motive. For long after every nat- 
ural desire is supplied, the merely mental man 
greedily pursues and takes what he can have 
no use for or enjoyment in owning. The 
man of intellect with undeveloped soul makes 
laws to protect himself in keeping the unenlight- 
ened workers in servitude, establishes codes of 
morals to restrain those whose natural needs 
might make them troublesome to his unenlight- 
ened plans of gain, centralizes the wealth of the 
many in the hands of the few, monopolizes the 
natural highways, stores up and in an extortion- 
ate way distributes to the masses the very things 
they produce in such wonderful abundance. He 
controls the fuel that lights the home and starts 
the wheels of industry; trades in the foods the 
people eat; turns a locked faucet on to quench 
the people's thirst, and in a thousand ways legal 
enough, drives men and women to failure, to 
want, starvation, crime, suicide, physical and 
mental prostitution, even to murder, and in gen- 



31 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

eral proudly and honestly, though ignorantly, 
applauds himself as a successful business man, 
teaches his children the same ideals, and looks 
upon those who fall in the unequal struggle as 
weak or inefficient; and accordingly sanctions the 
doctrine of the survival of the fittest and sub- 
scribes freely to charitable institutions, libraries, 
colleges and churches. 

In thus living upon others, men destroy in 
themselves that sweet sense of love and fellow- 
ship which alone can make them happy. To 
these the masterpieces of art are little more 
than objects of ownership. The voices of the 
prophets only annoy, they do not warn them, and 
the words of eloquence pleading for love and 
brotherhood are only weak, sentimental " sounds 
that come to them," and only momentarily, if at 
all, disturb their plans for dominion of all that 
the earth contains, or that her children produce 
by the aid of the intricately wonderful machin- 
ery. Yet this machinery was developed through 
ages of want by the tireless energy of millions 
who toil for food, shelter and raiment, patient, 
unawakened for the most part intellectually, 



LIFE, AND 32 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

their souls dormant within, but finding expres- 
sion in real helpfulness and fraternity whenever 
the sufferings of others match their own. Sub- 
mitting, even if poorly fed and clothed and 
sheltered, to the fallacious doctrines of content- 
ment formulated for them by their elder 
brothers, who thrive because of their submission. 
Dangerous if driven to hunger or if made naked 
or shelterless, for man, on the physical plane, 
justly looks for weapons, and obeys the first law 
of self-preservation. Enslaved as he is by his 
bodily needs and appetites, he has risen tremend- 
ously in recent years, for the machine age has 
increased his wants wonderfully, has stimulated 
his mental activities and made him understand in 
an ever larger way his real interest. 

The futility of brute force is made clear to 
the workers by their failure to win proper con- 
ditions for themselves and their families on the 
industrial field, through the weapons of boycots 
and strikes; enjoined by the courts they partici- 
pate in creating through partizan ballots, they are 
every hour driven to analyze causes and condi- 
tions that shut them out from the enjoyment of 



33 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

life. They compact themselves into closer unions 
as wealth centralizes, consider the abandonment 
of the old plan of trades autonomy, debate eco- 
nomic questions, study political weapons, develop 
their brains and reasoning faculties, and rapidly 
approach the intelligent liberation of industry 
and a government for the sake of men, instead 
of things, and a time when men industrially free 
will need little if any restraint from laws, fines, 
prisons and insane asylums. 

When man has gained access to the sources of 
life, he can supply his physical needs easily and 
superabundantly and without degrading drudg- 
ery, and have leisure and opportunity to develop 
the powers of his intellect and so to investigate 
and know something of the great spiritual truths 
that are ever, sphinx-like, questioning and not 
answering, forever retreating as we approach 
them, but always receding into higher realms of 
understanding and happiness. 



CHAPTER III 

MENTAL ATTAINMENT 

FROM the study of man as he lives on the 
physical plane, the intellectual plane and 
the spiritual plane, we find that his life is wholly 
incomplete if the man is deprived of the essen- 
tials of life upon either plane; that his life is 
limited by the ideals he seeks. If his life nar- 
rows to the earth, then the earth is what he 
struggles to possess. If it widens to embrace 
the universe of life, then his real Ufe rises to 
limitless heights, is perpetual and ever expand- 
ing and radiates as a sun to illumine the pathway 
towards the destiny of humanity. 

We find that the life of the individual is cir- 
cumscribed by the lives of all, that the individual 
cannot escape, that he must take part, that he 
must in a measure suffer and enjoy as others suf- 
fer and enjoy, that he can only pass from one 
plane to another, that if he does not live fully 
physically he dies physically; that if he does not 

34 



35 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

live mentally he remains upon the animal plane ; 
if he does not livfe spiritually he never rises to 
consciousness of immortality, and so must grope 
in fear and doubt, since immortality is incom- 
prehensible to the bcdy or to the mind. 

The growing soul of man enlarges as he 
hves, widens bis vision and reveals to him the 
relationship of all the physical, mental and spir- 
itual needs of his brothers, impels him to reach his 
strong hands back and help bring forward those 
who loiter or do not understand. Condemnation 
no longer falls from his Hps. He understands. 
He knows why justice can never come from a law 
of vengeance. He knows why his brothers falter 
and fall. He knows that the physical appetites 
are good, each one; that the right of fatherhood 
and the right of motherhood are equally great 
and divine; does not call one woman a fallen 
woman and another a holy woman, but sees mul- 
titudes behind each of them, as part causes and 
sharers. He casts no stones, and knowingly 
forgives those who do ; sees the one convicted of 
crime rendering perhaps a greater service to the 
world than his accuser or his judge or the jury 



LIFE, AND 36 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

that condemns ; feels that in the presence of the 
creative will he alone is guilty that hates an- 
other, and that it is not sinful to breathe the au% 
nor to drink the water, nor to use the bounties 
of the earth made for all, nor sin to protest even 
by physically taking that which was made in such 
superabundance for the needs of the children of 
the earth, because he believes that it should 
belong and does morally belong to them, as 
was intended by the Creator. Education, Truth, 
Love, these are the words of those who know the 
scheme of the universe, and for these words they 
do not make excuses. They are poets and 
prophets. They keep up the warning cry. 
They have lived all lives, experienced all experi- 
ences. Literature is everywhere filled with the 
cry for better things for human needs. Art, 
music and the drama are voicing the spirit of our 
day, and more fearlessly for the people are being 
prepared. 

We go forward to revolution, which is not an 
overthrow of government, but a restoration of 
rights. It may be peaceful revolution, if we use 
our minds and act intelligently; beautiful, if we 



I 



37 * LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

study and understand and guide the forces that 
flow steadily fronl the three planes of life and 
compel a new adjustment in the order of prog- 
ress ; frightful, if conditions proceed far enough 
to enrage an excluded multitude, robbed by their 
own public ojfficials, crushed by exploiters. 
Horrible revolution, if from political supremacy 
among the nations of the earth, we descend and 
become greedy and heartless market-grabbers; 
miserable, if we attempt much longer to fool the 
working man with questions of money or with 
revised tariffs or taxes on the rich or control of 
Trusts. How the day shall proceed depends 
upon what pressure may be put upon man 
through his physical necessities before he has 
become sufficiently educated to handle the prob- 
lem patiently. It depends upon what the men of 
great mental and financial power may do, when 
in the near future they have, as they must have, 
in their complete control, every means of life. 
Even now everyone knows that monopolies may 
make and unmake Presidents as well as Senators, 
and that we have in fact an oligarchic plutocracy. 
It depends even more perhaps upon what the 



LIFE, AND ' 88 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

great multitude of teachers, journalists, authors 
and preachers may say or do, or not say, or not 
do, for men left to supply their physical wants 
will supply them in a physical way, and if in- 
tellectual weapons are not offered they will find 
physical ones. 

Intellectually, man will, if he knows how, or is 
taught how to, choose an intelligent weapon, the 
ballot; governmental exercise of rightly used 
power. But are there men and women enough, 
physically, mentally and spiritually brave and 
free enough to see and teach the truth about life 
in all its completeness to the hungering millions? 
Or shuffling about in their shackles, will they, too, 
await the shock which great economic changes al- 
ways bring? 

The spirit of our day asks the question. Men 
and women everywhere know now that there is 
but one question, and that is Life. All the mul- 
titudinous problems society wrestles over to-day 
are but the accusing manifestations of a badly 
organized society; unjust and unreasonable; and 
these problems can never be solved; they are as 
they should be — unsolvable. 



39 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

What shall we do? We cannot go thought- 
lessly on. Evoli^tion arrested produces death, 
corruption, disaster; aided, it leads to better Ufe. 
Each one cannot answer for himself; he is him- 
self a social being. He can only persuade others 
to answer for all. Until all are saved, no one is 
saved. The ones worthy of salvation do not seek 
it for themselves; they wisely seek it for others, 
to secure it for themselves. In losing life they 
find it.* 

" No one could tdl me where my soul might be ; 
I sought for God, but God eluded me, 
I sought my Brother out, and found all three." 

— Ernest Crosby. 



* Note. — I am indebted for much of these three chapters to 
Stephen Marion Reynolds. 



CHAPTER IV 

LIBERTY 

" Dilige, et quod vis, fac." — St, Augustine. 
(If you but love, you may do as you incline.) 

PHILOSOPHERS have disputed as to what 
ideal Liberty really is. The great Herbert 
Spencer says finally that the greatest possible 
liberty is, for each so to use his own powers as 
not to interfere with the similar use of the powers 
of others. 

But any who love with a whole heart have 
greater liberty than that: their liberty is to do 
what they please. Complete liberty for the ani- 
mal is to do whatever it wishes within its powers ; 
so of the mind and the soul. 

If I seek to deprive my neighbor of his goods 
and he seek to deprive me, we enslave each other. 
My baby does not so enslave me, for I want noth- 
ing of hers ; and whatever she wants of mine, she 
is welcome to, because I love her: perfect love 
ceases to be selfish and receives all into the same 

40 



41 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

family relationship. In that degree that I cease 
to be selfish, I am freed from my plundering 
neighbor and he even ceases to desire to plunder 
me. If he does still desire to plunder, he de- 
sires it because it is needful that both of us should 
learn in just that way. 

We recognize in our judgments of the acts of 
others that it is stupid to be unkind or unjust. 
To try to oppose ourselves to justice is to fight 
against the God of Nature; like thieves, we so 
lay up troubles and not treasures for ourselves. 

Anyone who irritates us or who can make us 
angry, has power over us to exactly to that ex- 
tent. Why then should one will to be unloving? 

Emerson says : 

** If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding 
or stratagem escape remuneration. Secret retributions are 
always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine 
justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants 
and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set 
their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forevermore the 
ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star 
and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil." 

Even mere intellectual reason would teach us, 



LIFE, AND 42 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

if we would separate reason from our antago- 
nisms, that only in love is happiness. If then, 
there is but one principle in the Universe, to 
come into accord with it is to ally ourselves with 
the forces of gravitation, to "hitch our wagon 
to a star." To get out of harmony with its high- 
est expression is to oppose ourselves to the Na- 
ture of Things. The wicked man is in truth the 
fool, for the way of transgressors is hard and 
they who know not the Law of Love are ac- 
cursed. 

If I love perfectly, then I can do as an indi- 
vidual what I please, for I do not please volun- 
tarily to hurt anyone. As a member of a com- 
munity working in unloving ways, however, I 
must still in some ways by my competition hurt 
some men. 

When all are loving no one will need to hurt 
another at all, and all will be able to do what they 
please. Life is happiness only in so far as we 
are able to do what we like ; as Crosby puts it : 

" * Then you do as you like in your land of Love, 
Where you hold no lord in awe ? * 
* Why, we do as we Love,* replied the lad, 
* And to Love is our only law.' " 



43 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

How simple that makes what we call ethics. 
We may be perplfexed about what is " right," — 
the only one who is always ready to decide what 
is right, is the policeman. But there can be no 
question as to what is loving. Not " loving " for 
someone else; we do not have to decide for him; 
nor loving in some other circumstances, but lov- 
ing for us here and now. Even that we do not 
need to decide, for being loving ourselves, we 
need only to do what we feel impelled to do, 
knowing that the loving heart cannot prompt an 
unloving act. 

If we do what truly seems to us loving, seems 
at the time loving, we may think afterwards that 
the results were disastrous : but we cannot regret 
our own action. No one ever says " I am sorry 
I did not do what I thought unkind." That 
would be to wish that we had been bad, that we 
had followed the lower road though we saw the 
higher. Yet if our action was in the least 
tainted with self-seeking, we may come to regret 
it, in the light of later experience. 

For results we are not responsible : our concern 
is to follow the light that we see, to do the best 



LIFE, AND 41 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

that we know; the results we can not control. 
No most perfect vision, in anticipation of the 
future, can guard against the combinations of 
circumstances that may thwart us: nor can we 
discern the changes of motive and character in 
others and in ourselves that may make the thwart- 
ing good. 

Love, and please yourself : love, and you shall 
please others. 

It will be objected that if we advise everyone 
to do as he pleases, some will invade the rights of 
others and injure them. So they will: and the 
others meeting them on their own plane, will 
resent it and meet it with counter injury. Per- 
haps you have heard of the Hindu who broke his 
Master's vase and said in excuse that "it was 
fated that he should break it." " Yes," said his 
Master, "and it was fated that I should kick 
you." The undeveloped, who are also the instru- 
ments of God for education, will inflict enough 
violence, like blows, imprisonments and judi- 
cial death, without our doing what we feel to be 
unkind. 

Only understanding is needed to show that we 



45 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

should not be angry or revenge ourselves when 
we are injured. Says Epictetus: 

" The philosophers say that there is one kind 
of motive in all men, as when I agree with some- 
thing, the feeling that it is so; and when I dis- 
agree, the feeling that it is not so ; yea, and when 
I withhold my judgment, the feeling that it is 
uncertain; and likewise, when I am inclined to- 
wards something, the feeling that it is for my 
profit; moreover that it is impossible to judge 
one thing to be best for me and to seek a different 
one, to judge one thing right and be inclined 
towards another — why then have we indignation 
with the multitude? ' They are robbers,' one 
saith, ' and thieves.' And what is it to be robbers 
and thieves? Is it not to be mistaken about the 
things that are good and evil? Shall we then have 
indignation with them, or shall we only pity 
them? Nay, but show them the error, and you 
shall see how they will cease from it. But if 
they do not see the error, they have naught bet- 
ter than the deceptive appearance of the thing to 
them. 

" Should not then, this robber or this thief, be 



LIFE, AND 45 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

destroyed? By no means, but take it rather this 
way: This man who errs, and is deceived con- 
cerning things of greatest moment, who is 
bhnded, not in the vision which distinguisheth 
black and white, but in the judgment which dis- 
tinguisheth Good and Evil — should we not de- 
stroy him? And thus speaking, you shall recog- 
nize how inhuman that is which you say, and how 
it is as if you said, ' Shall we not destroy this 
blind man, this deaf man? ' For if it is the great- 
est misfortune to be deprived of the greatest 
things, and the greatest thing in every man is a 
Will such as he ought to have, and one be de- 
prived of this, why are you still indignant with 
him? Man, you should not be moved contrary 
to Nature by the evil deeds of other men. Pity 
them rather, be not inclined to offence and 
hatred; abandon the phrases of the multitude, 
hke * these cursed wretches.' How have you sud- 
denly become so wise and hard to please? 

"When someone may do you an injury or 
speak ill of you, remember that he does it or 
speaks it, believing that it is meet and right for 
him to do so. It is not possible, then, that he can 



47 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

do the thing that appears best to you, but the 
thing that appears best to him. Wherefore, if 
good appears evil to him, it is he that is injured, 
being deceived. For, if anyone takes a true con- 
sequence to be false, it is not the consequence that 
is injured, but he who is deceived. Setting out, 
then, with these opinions, you will bear a gentle 
mind toward any man who may injure you. For, 
say on each occasion, so it appeared to him." 



CHAPTER V 

FALSE IDEAS OF LIFE 

" It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come 
by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can 
only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with 
being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feel- 
ing for the rest of the world as well as ourselves." 

— George Eliot. 

YOU and I live for our own good, says Tol- 
stoy; we all seek for the conditions which 
will satisfy us; we cannot imagine life without 
this desire for happiness.* 

The egoist and the altruist both believe in 
yielding many desires to others; for instance, in 
courtesy and kindness, or for aifection or love 
for others. So parents deny themselves many 
things for their children ; but this is a denial that 
brings them satisfaction and cannot be called 
self-sacrifice. 

A sister foregoes the development of her tal- 

* Tolstoy's own doctrine is well summarized in the sketch, Ap- 
pendix I. 

48 



49 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ents to allow more money to go to develop a 
brother's talents. » A husband perhaps for his 
wife's sake remains in a Church after he has 
ceased to believe in its doctrines. The one is 
preferring the higher nature to the lower; the 
other may be choosing the lower, but each is seek- 
ing that which he thinks is good. 

We find, however, that all other persons also 
live for their own particular good, which they, 
too, think will bring them satisfaction; and they 
believe that their good often requires the sacri- 
fice of your desires and mine. For their petty 
happiness, living beings are willing to deprive 
other beings of greater happiness and even of 
hfe itself, so that every one of us is always con- 
tending against hosts of others. At the end of 
the struggle we see death, which we believe to be 
the loss of consciousness, or at best, a change to a 
spirit life, which seems to us a strange and ter- 
rible transformation. 

We feel all the time that if we gain the good 
which we seek it will be incomplete, even if it 
could last ; and we feel that it will not last, that it 
will be but for a moment in our hands. 



LIFE, AND 50 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Feeling only our own desires, we imagine that 
the good for which we strive and true happiness 
are the same. We shall find, as we go on, that 
this must be a mistake. No one's true happiness 
can conflict with another's. 

True happiness cannot consist in seeking our 
own good, or in even unconsciously trading off 
our work intended by us to do good to others, for 
their work designed by them to do good to us. 
Nor is such selfishness as that really natural at all. 
In truth, to seek the happiness of all and to give 
up our individual animal or intellectual gratifi- 
cations for the good of others, is as natural to 
men as it is for an animal to give its life in de- 
fending its young. 

Such is the gospel of all great religious teach- 
ers. Herbert Spencer and other scientific men 
deny this doctrine, saying that the object of life 
is simply the satisfaction of our desires. Chris- 
tian pessimists also deny this gospel, saying that, 
futile as is the plan of life, it can be amended by 
faith in a future life — ^to be carried out more per- 
fectly, but on the same principles. 

What is fife and what is the good in life which 



51 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

will give us happiness ? Each one thinks someone 
else must know, and so he follows the observances 
which he sees some other follow. 

Science answers that life is the struggle of per- 
sons, races, and species for existence; and that 
the good of life is success in that struggle, " the 
highest exercise of faculty." This is the answer 
of those whom we may call the Scribes. Eccle- 
siastical teachers, who are like the Pharisees, gen- 
erally answer that happiness consists only in the 
hope of a future life, for, say they, there is not, 
and never can be, good in this life. 

The time has already come when it is clear to 
all who will consider it, that the idea of renounc- 
ing or misusing this life for the sake of preparing 
for a life for one's self beyond, is a delusion. 

It is no improvement on this to say that it is 
good to live for myself in the present, for expe- 
rience teaches us that our separate life, if so used, 
is evil and senseless. Nor is it better to live for 
the separate lives of the family, of society, of 
one's country, or even of mankind. If the hfe 
of each person is miserable and senseless, then 
the life of any collection of persons is also mis- 



LIFE, AND 52 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

erable and senseless, for the mass is no better 
and no more worthy of sacrifice than are the in- 
dividuals that make up the mass. 

Men believe that life consists of a desire for 
happiness for themselves and for those about 
them, but they feel that to all, evil and death will 
come. We all know that we must live, yet we 
find circumstances that make a perfect animal 
life impossible, and so, appreciating no other life 
than that of the animal, there begins a strife with 
ourselves which results in misery. We have an 
uneasy feeling that what we think and desire 
about life is not right. But birds and beasts and 
simple minded persons that have the one simple 
law of the animal, and submit to that law, have 
no such struggle, and live a joyous and tranquil 
life. So with us also, to follow the instincts 
which are really natural to man is to attain hap- 
piness without struggle. 

As Nietzsche says: " To have to combat the 
instincts, is the formula for decadence: as long as 
life ascends^ happiness is following our normal 
instincts." 

Yet the birth of the higher desires is painful: 



5S LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

it is the " sword " that Jesus came to bring. It 
is accompanied by struggle and violence ; it often 
excites even physical violence which is typified 
by the scourge of small cords by which the money 
changers were driven out of the Temple. 



CHAPTER VI 

DESIRES 

" I think I could turn and live with the animals. 
They are so placid and self-contained 
I stand and look at them long and long/' etc. 

— Whitman. 

WHY does man worry? Why does he fear 
the outcome of his plans? He invests 
money and at once fears that he will lose it. He 
engages in business and is anxious lest it should 
not prove successful. He frets over a thousand 
and one things. 

The animals do not worry or fret. They are 
calm and content. The winds of heaven blow, 
the sun shines, the stars move across the placid 
spheres without hurry or stress. There is har- 
mony in the action and reaction of things — ^but 
man seems an exception. We are drawn by many 
forces, we have desires, emotions, passions: we 
come into relation with others who also have de- 
sires, emotions, passions, not harmonious, but 

54 



55 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

discordant and antagonistic. There is conflict 
not only between individuals, but within the heart 
of each; history is a bloody page of conflicts. 
Biography is a story of struggles; man against 
man— man against himself, man against Nature. 
Society continually splits into factions, race 
against race, the war of creeds, those who take 
against those who make, and the poor against the 
rich. 

Animals do not fight thus: they follow their 
desires, satisfy them and are content : they kill to 
eat — they never kill to reform, nor for the glory 
of God. They violate no moral code, because 
they have none. Their life is spontaneous, free, 
natural; they are a law unto themselves, neither 
good nor bad. Life, the great universal, all-en- 
folding, all-pervading life, flows through them, 
manifests in them harmoniously, beautifully. 

But man! What is the matter with man? Is 
he under a difl'erent law from that which obtains 
in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms? 
Man is under a different law (or attitude towards 
the universal) insofar as he regards himself as 
separate from and superior or inferior to the 



LIFE, AND 56 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Great Life. The great majority of human 
beings appear to themselves as separated exist- 
ences ; moral or immoral as the case may be, but 
separate and distinct from the Great Life, with 
destinies for good or bad, or wills which are quite 
independent of the Great Life. In the popular 
theology God and the devil are supposed to 
amuse themselves in a contest as to which shall 
get the most of us. 

We express the emotions of our souls in creeds 
and then fall down and worship the forms as of 
divine origin. And they are of divine origin: 
they do represent a necessary stage in the evolu- 
tion of the soul ; but the mischief begins when we 
have outgrown the creeds but still cling to them 
as fixed revelations. Creeds and institutions be- 
come fixed forms, but the soul forever progresses. 

What is true of our religious creeds is equally 
true of our economic system. The economic sys- 
tem of to-day is based upon the needs of a past 
age. It arose in response to the cry of selfish- 
ness; to-day it no longer represents the highest 
needs of humanity. It has become a fetter, a 
handicap upon the social spirit: it is the powerful 



57 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

selfishness, and is Jhe immediate cause of worry 
and fret, because it is not in harmony with the 
inner life. 

Why does man fret and worry, especially 
about his business affairs? The business man 
worries much more, man for man, and dollar for 
dollar, than does the farmer over his crop risks. 
The farmer sows: dry weather, winter, frosts, 
an unfavorable Spring, blight and insects, floods 
and hail, threaten the harvest from the sowing of 
the seed until the grain is garnered — and yet the 
farmer worries but little — ^much less than the 
business man over his investments. Why? Is it 
not because the business man feels, consciously or 
subconsciously, that he is engaged in a venture 
which is opposed to brotherhood — ^that he gains 
at someone's expense ; that in short he is playing 
an arbitrary and cruel game, invented by men 
fighting for personal aggrandizement against 
their fellow-men? 

The farmer trusts God or Nature: he works 
in harmony with Nature and having done his 
part, rests in the assurance that Nature will do 
her part. The business man distrusts his own 



LIFE, AND 58 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

scheme : he distrusts himself and his fellow-man, 
he distrusts his own system. He feels that while 
life should be a glorious adventure, his own per- 
sonal schemes are of a marauding character. 
Business at present is a fight of man against 
man. It is not a question of how to serve, how to 
create beauty and joy; but of hojv to make 
profits, how to sell for the highest price, cheap 
goods, cheaply made by cheap men and cheap 
methods. It is the dollar and not the man, that 
is paramount in business : his plans may fail, and 
even if they succeed, they will lead but to more 
entanglements. 

But God, or Nature, or Life, or the Over Soul, 
cares supremely for man, not for the dollar, hence 
the conflict and distrust between the real inner 
self, and business. When the self-conscious, sep- 
arate-seeming self realizes that humanity is a 
unity, that there is one Universal Life in which 
there is joyous activity and harmonious develop- 
ment, we will abandon the egoistic strife for per- 
sonal advancement and this conflict will cease. 
As soon as we have had enough of the struggle 
man will return to his Father's field, the great 



59 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Jocund Earth, and there find an unlimited scope 
for endless activity in harmony with Universal 
Life. 

The desires that enslave us are the material de- 
sires. A desire for truth cannot enslave : a desire 
to express the Spirit of Love cannot enslave. 
Such desires cannot conflict with themselves no 
matter by whom they may be expressed.* 

The exercise of desire is growth; evolution is 
through the increase and unf oldment of desires. 
First satisfaction of the desires, for food per- 
haps, then for music, art, and mental food : then 
for harmony and union, spiritual food. Through 
these exercises of faculty in turn, we gain the 
highest unfoldment. To sacrifice these unwil- 
lingly is useless, if not wrong — ^to give the 
greater for what seems to us the less, is foolish- 
ness. 

We are surrounded by conditions and circum- 
stances which make a perfect life an impossibility 
— ^that is, of the kind which unreasoning feeling 

*Note. — No originality is claimed for any part of this book. 
I believe the foregoing paragraphs are largely taken from some- 
thing I have read — I have forgotten where. As with the follow- 
ing from Tolstoy on " Life," I have freely modified. 



LIFE, AND 60 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

demands. Striving for two objects, when it is 
possible to attain only one, produces an inevitable 
struggle which is the cause of most of our unhap- 
piness, and which creates in thinking minds rest- 
lessness in regard to the purposes of life. These 
can be removed only by willingly subjecting our- 
selves to the law of our higher being. 

Our difficulty arises from mistaking our phys- 
ical life for our whole life — that is, for the phys- 
ical, mental and spiritual life. We^are aware of 
all these existences; the physical life we know by 
sensations of the body, the mental life by the de- 
sire for knowledge, the spiritual life by the feel- 
ing that we love. We feel that there are in us 
two contradictory natures; but we know that 
there is only one true and natural life. 

This seeming contradiction in ourselves recalls 
the sensation of one who, crooking two fingers, 
one over the other, rolls a little ball between them, 
and feels as if there were two balls, but knows 
that there is only one. 

It is because men have not found true satis- 
faction that they always desire what they have 



61 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

not got or cannot get. Not having happiness, 
they think that it must be obtained through some- 
thing that is unfortunately out of their reach. 
But when they have attained that, they are Uke a 
man who cHmbs a range of hills which forms the 
horizon, only to see a new horizon as far away as 
ever. 

They think that they are not happy at home, 
need change, new interests, or different surround- 
ings. So they try these and feel better : but after 
a time the dissatisfaction returns, often expressed 
in ill health. 

The fact is that they could not be happy any- 
where: excitement and novelties take their at- 
tention off themselves for a time and so they 
spend their money and themselves in some fresh 
plan, seeking pleasure or fun. Fun is expensive 
but happiness costs nothing. 

The subordination of personal aims to life in 
accordance with the higher nature, is as nat- 
ural to man as is flying to a bird.* If the 

*" Whenever one understands that his personal will, desires 
and plans are what block his path — ^that to give these up abso- 
lutely is the price of going on — this is his 'renunciation.' It 



LIFE, AND 52 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

bird wills only to run, that does not prove that it 
is not the bird's nature to fly. So, if we see about 
us men with unawakened minds, men who think 
that their lives consist in securing their own hap- 
piness alone, it is not thereby proved that there 
is no higher life. We can never go through the 
golden gates alone; to search for our good in 
self -gratifications is to make ourselves like an 
animal which might think that its life consisted 
in submitting to the laws of gravity by not mov- 
ing, but which is fretted, nevertheless, by appe- 
tite and the desire for exercise. 

means no forced and unnatural withdrawing from human life and 
interests, from human joys and relations — ^which indeed constitute 
the very means by which the soul may grow: the only means at 
its command now; it means literally a letting go, a giving up of 
the idea that we want certain things, which may be perfectly 
good and desirable in themselves. If we want these things and 
seek them because we want them, with the idea that happiness 
depends upon getting them, we have planted and are hourly 
nourishing the seed of misery and unrest that will allow us no 
hour of peace while life lasts. 

"The peace that comes from consciousness of freedom and a 
power that is one with the power of God, comes only when all 
desire has ceased. It is a complete realization of the truth which 
Carpenter voices in these words: *Deep as the universe is my 
life — and I know it; nothing can dislodge the knowledge of it; 
nothing can destroy, nothing can harm me.' It is an absolute 
trust in, and dependence upon that vital power, resistless, calm, 
eternal, of which Whitman sings so truly. When these statements 
appeal to one's consciousness, not as mere poetical symbols, but 
as actual, present, scientific statements of governing law, then it 



631 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

This state of dissatisfaction must come to 
everyone who thinks; so we say that " thought is 
pain " ; and everyone thinks to himself, " I am a 
strange mixture." It can be escaped only by a 
merely material existence, like that of a sheep , or 
by seeking the new and better life. 

Some never look up from their muck rakes; 
but if one does and sees for a moment that there 
is a better life, he can never again satisfy himself 
with the worse. He has gone "out into space to 
behold the birth of stars — ^to learn one of their 
•meanings and never be quiet again." 

The source of this dissatisfaction, in everyone 

will be impossible to have a "plan" for personal happiness, or 
even for the happiness of others, to work for a definite result, to 
be unhappy or have a sense of failure if said result is not at- 
tained; then the soul will take to growing as the flower grows; it 
will grow because the sun shines and it cannot help growing. 
The whole life will be opened to spiritual light and be guided by 
the unerring One who stands behind the personal self, 'compla- 
cent, indifferent, both in and out of the game.' It will be as 
impossible to be worried, or disturbed, for fear things may not 
come out right, as it would be for the chemist to worry for fear 
a certain combination of materials would not produce the usual 
result. He knows that definite laws obtain, and he proceeds 
with the certainty that nature will inevitably act according to 
these laws. The laws of human life are just as definite and 
certain; and when we once get rid of our doubts, and depend 
upon these, we shall be safe." — A. G. Hekrixg, " The Conserva- 
tor," Feb., 1903. 



LIFE, AND 64s 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

who has had a glimpse of the light, lies mainly 
in this, that what we should strive for consciously 
is either unknown to us or disregarded by us. 
But we strive consciously for the things that 
should be attained as unconsciously as breath- 
ing. 

The higher reason which the Bible calls Wis- 
dom (logos) , is the only guide we have to a com- 
plete life. 

The fact that the ineffectual teachings of Aris- 
totle, Bacon, Comte and others remain, and al- 
ways will remain, the property of a few, can 
never control the masses, and are therefore never 
corrupted by superstitions, is considered by 
learned men to be proof of their truth. But the 
teachings of the Brahmins, of Zoroaster, Lao- 
tse, Confucius and Jesus, which in their essence 
are really one, are accounted superstitions, merely 
because they have changed the lives of millions. 
Their real teaching, though in varying degrees 
of perfection, is that the true life is more than 
the life of the mere body and mind ; which is the 
sum of all human wisdom. 



55 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Reason has been directed toward the discovery 
of truth by the stlidy of the origin and history 
of mankind, and to the circumstances with which 
mankind is surrounded. Later, we have taken 
to studying the mind by the laws of matter, in 
the hope that thereby we may learn the nature of 
man's activity. 

These studies are instructive; but from them 
we cannot find the true meaning of life; any 
more than a tree, if it could study the physical 
and chemical changes which take place in it, could 
learn from them to collect and distribute sap for 
the growth of the leaves and fruit. So the study 
of these laws will not afford us the slightest guid- 
ance as to what to do with a bit of bread in our 
hands; whether to give it to our child, to a 
stranger, to the dog, or to eat it ourselves; 
whether to defend this bit of bread or to give it 
to the first who demands it. But really, living is 
entirely made up of decisions of just such 
questions. On such decisions happiness de- 
pends. 

A moonlit landscape or the outline of a moun- 



LIFE, AND QQ 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

tain appeals to us more strongly because we see 
only its essentials. Things at a distance seem 
simple because we cannot see the complexity of 
their details. Such things, therefore, attract our 
attention, while that which is close at hand ap- 
pears complex. Accordingly, men think that 
they understand what happiness is, and what 
time and matter are, but that they do not under- 
stand themselves. 

In the case of a mere animal, sound reason con- 
sists only in care for its physical well-being. So 
we can understand the life of an animal, because 
we see in it, as in ourselves, a striving for happi- 
ness, and the necessity for it also to submit to 
reason. For we really know things not in pro- 
portion to how simple they are, or seem to be, but 
in proportion to their nearness of association with 
ourselves. 

But everyone wants to find the true and satis- 
fying life. 

Charles Wagner expresses the common need: 
" Oh, for the Philosopher of the future who will 
teach us Joy." 

Now the true life of man, the better part, 



67 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

which all may choose, is found in that which is 
nearest to us, and therefore seems complicated, 
although it is really simple. It consists in con- 
trol of the animal hfe by true reason and har- 
mony of both with soul. 



PART II— LOVE 



Not to identify ourselves with the shadow, but to attain 
the knowledge of our celestial self is the object of this 
terrestrial life. 

If men realized their true nature as vehicles of the Di- 
vine Spirit, they would see the utter folly of their craving 
for that which without benefiting the spiritual, is agreeable 
only for their material selves. 

— Jacob BoehMj 1600. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE LAW OF LIFE 

TO be willing to give up our own satisfaction 
as animals is the true law of life; although 
on account of the complexity of our animal life 
(which we perceive because that life is near to 
us) it seems to us that the true object of all our 
life must be to satisfy our bodily and intellectual 
demands. But true reason shows that this is not 
so. In the case of a mere animal, an activity 
which is opposed to its individual welfare is re- 
nunciation of its life; in the case of a man, he 
who loses his life, finds it. 

If we do not willingly cease to strive for ani- 
mal happiness in our lives, we must unwillingly 
cease to strive for it at our deaths. 

We should grow out of subjection to animal 
desires as naturally as a child forsakes its doll. 
Any violent renunciation of normal, animal de- 
sires before the individual is ready, is asceticism, 
and causes all the evils of repression. 

71 



LIFE, AND 72 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Think of the slavery to which most persons are 
self-condemned by their desires which grow into 
habits. 

A man must be wakened at such a time, re- 
quires his breakfast, needs to have his coffee just 
so, is obliged to catch that car, wants his morning 
paper, has to have a seat next the window, and 
so on all day. If one of these circumstances goes 
wrong, he is all upset: but not one of them has 
anything to do with real happiness. Most of us 
will admit that some of these things are unneces- 
sary, but if anyone thinks it pays to give his at- 
tention to them, he ought to do so; but we may 
take thought for to-day, though surely not 
pains. 

For the body, with its occupation and func- 
tions, is merely one of the instruments of life. 
The animal exists through force and matter in 
harmony with their laws, and to the animal that 
is all there is of life. A man exists in the same 
way, but to him that is only an incident of life. 

To pass beyond the pursuit of animal happi- 
ness is the law of man's highest and complete 
life. If it be not accomplished freely, by sub- 



73 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

mission to the higher reason, then it is accom- 
plished violently in every man at the death of the 
flesh, when, in consequence of the outgrown con- 
dition or of the burden of suffering, he has to es- 
cape from the consciousness of a perishing per- 
sonality, and to pass into another form of exist- 
ence. 

Regeneration, or spiritual birth, consists in 
learning that animal happiness is not the object 
of our lives. Those who have not had this birth 
can no more understand what it is than the dry 
seed can anticipate its bursting into a plant. 

Although feeling that happiness for himself 
is impossible, each man spends his life in pursuit 
of it. Though conscious that our effort is in 
vain, we strive to make others prefer our happi- 
ness to their own. But happiness can be obtained 
only by everyone's recognizing the good of others 
as his own ; that is oneness : only so can be ended 
the useless contest, in which we are all involved. 
To admit the truth of this doctrine, even if we 
cannot now put it in practice, is to abandon the 
false and material object of life, which gets fur- 
ther away, the more we pursue it. 



LIFE, AND 74 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

When we admit this doctrine, the fear of death 
vanishes, for that is but the fear of losing the 
happiness of hf e by the death of the flesh. If we 
can unite our happiness with the happiness of 
others, then this death will not seem to be the dis- 
continuance of happiness. 

" But," replies the troubled and erring heart 
of man, " that is not life. To cease to struggle 
in life is suicide." Then the spiritual nature re- 
joins: "I know nothing about that. I know 
that such is the essence of the life of man, and 
that there is no other, and that there can be no 
other. I know that such a life is true life and 
happiness both for one person and for all the 
world. 

"I know that what you call enjoyment will 
become happiness for you only when you shall 
not take for yourself, but when others shall share 
theirs with you, and that you will then recognize 
enjoyments which you seize only for yourself to 
be superfluous and irksome, as they really are. 
You will free yourself from actual sufl*erings 
only when others and not yourself alone shall 
release you from them. You cannot by yourself 



75 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

avoid sufferings in life. Men know this even 
now, for, through fear of anticipated sufferings, 
some would deprive themselves of life itself by 
suicide. 

" The more T cherish myself and strive with 
others," continues the spiritual nature, ** the more 
will others oppose me and the more viciously will 
they struggle with me; the more I hedge myself 
in from suffering, the more torturing will it be- 
come, and the more I guard myself against death, 
the more terrible will it appear. I know that 
whatever a man may do he can attain to no hap- 
piness until he shall live in harmony with the law 
of his life." 

A reasoning man cannot fail to see that if we 
admit the possibility of replacing the striving for 
our own satisfaction with a striving for the well- 
being of all, including ourselves, life will become 
rational and happy.* 

But " to love the neighbor more than self," as 
ultra-altruists urge, produces inward pain, abase- 

* " If thine eye be single thine whole body shall be full of light," 
that is to say, when we have one simple object. Our confusion 
arises because we are looking for several things at once. 



LIFE, AND 76 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ment, protest ; to love self most cuts off all those 
currents of life which would flow from him to 
you and feed you. — (J. Wm. Lloyd.) 

A recent writer says that one of the most rigid 
and yet stupid of stage conventions is a blind 
self-sacrifice. 

"You have a vicious brother? Then take his 
guilt upon you, break the hearts of those who be- 
lieve in you (the wicked brother has no friends 
who will be shocked) and go to State's Prison. 
You have perhaps a vain and wayward sister or 
a fro ward girl chum? Then take her fault upon 
yourself. Prevent her premeditated folly by an- 
ticipating her arrival at the rooms of the man in 
the case. Be discovered there yourself, and in 
the ruin of your own good name let the little fool 
escape the world's accusing finger. 

" Herbert Spencer criticises this goose-brained 
altruism. It is as mischievous as the altruism of 
the foolish mother who screens a tricky and im- 
pudent child and saves him from correction, only 
to see her perfect work thereafter in the evolu- 
tion of a young scamp who is a discredit to his 
parents. 



77 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

" It is doing no person a kindness to make him 
think that he is exempt from the law of cause and 
effect, and it is putting the ethical system of the 
universe out of joint. The deception practiced 
in his behalf is not justified of its fruits. It 
makes it worse for you, worse for your friend, 
worse for the man or woman you seek to shield. 
No one worth his salt would permit another thus 
to assume his own guilty burden — or rather its 
public consequences; the guilt remains, and it is 
rendered blacker because it is unexpiated and 
another is suffering vainly for it. 

" In the spurious stage version of the vicarious 
atonement, the sinner does not even have the 
grace to be grateful to his scapegoat. He takes 
an impossible situation lightly. He is used to 
having the party of the second part step in be- 
tween his guilt and its punishment. He is hke 
the able-bodied man who * loves to see his poor 
old mother work.' His callous ingratitude is 
the final touch. It turns the wrong-headed sac- 
rifice into folly. Love others because you love 
yourself. There is a thing that is loftier still 
than to love our neighbor as we love ourselves ; it 



LIFE, AND 78 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

is to love ourselves in our neighbor." — {Maeter- 
linck.) 

" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," so 
reads the Law of Love. Trying to love him bet- 
ter than you love yourself is injurious to all 
concerned. 

Besides it is really ignoring the fact that All 
are One. It is making two of you, yourself and 
him, to treat him as though it were possible for 
you to suffer instead of him. You can only 
suffer with him. 

If your right hand foolishly gets into the fire, 
your left hand, as well as the whole body, suffers 
with it ; but your left hand does not self -sacrific- 
ingly thrust itself into the fire, with the idea that 
by getting burned itself it can take upon itself 
the pain and scar which are the inevitable result 
to its companion hand of too great intimacy with 
the fire. 

If we really feel the Oneness, we will not im- 
agine for one moment that we can take the direct 
consequences of another's mistakes upon our- 
selves, or escape the indirect consequences. 
True, we can get ourselves into very hot water 



79 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

by trying to, but that is merely the consequences, 
to us, of our own* folly in tampering with the 
Law of Cause and Effect. Until we do see the 
all-including love our lives are poverty-stricken 
and valueless. 

Himianity is making some progress in practi- 
cal loving, for those who have been in the habit of 
kilHng other creatures are beginning to "ex- 
ploit " them, or to tame them, and to kill fewer 
of them, and to subsist on the eggs and milk, 
rather than on the flesh. We are learning to re- 
strain our destructiveness. Because we revolt 
from the narrow selfishness we condemn the 
search for mere gratification, and we approve 
abstinence, and worship self-sacrifice for the 
good of others, and we apologize for war. 

We recognize, in short, that there is no good 
but Love. 

Simple men, who labor with their hands, more 
generally acknowledge that the better life is to 
give themselves to others. It is the " cultivated " 
intellects which defend selfishness on economic or 
philosophic or moral grounds. They gave their 
time to gratifying the appetites for knowledge. 



LIFE, AND 80 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

or power, or beauty ; trying to satisfy wants and 
desires which grow stronger the more they are 
recognized. It is not by cultivating and stimu- 
lating these desires and then trying to satisfy 
them, that happiness is to be obtained ; but rather 
by submitting to true reason. 

" Desires " are as numerous as the radii of a 
circle, and can never be satisfied; one who looks 
in the shops, or in the libraries, may realize that 
all the things that a man does, show the existence 
of desires ; but even one of them, if dwelt upon, 
may take possession of a man's whole being. 

Once a very clever but self-absorbed man was 
showing his fine collection of copper enamels. A 
woman, who is interested in schools and friendly 
societies, turned to me, saying, " How interested 
he is in his little bric-a-brac." It was not un- 
kindly meant, but it seemed to me as contemptu- 
ous a thing as could have been said. Yet it was 
infinitely better to be interested in his petty bric- 
a-brac than, like many rich men, in nothing. 

Even the collection of postage stamps or the 
possession of fans becomes a sufficient object for 
the lives, such as they are, of many persons. 



81 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

That is the sense in which the rich man shall 
never enter into tiie Kingdom of Heaven. As 
long as we have that load of riches which we are 
determined not to drop, we shall find the narrow 
gate too small. A man may be one of Jesus' rich 
men who has nothing but a custom-house place, 
or, as Sinton says, " He who has a reputation 
which he is anxious to retain is still one of the 
rich men who shall hardly enter in." 

We have to leave all to follow the Spirit: 
though the Spirit may send it after us, if it be 
his good pleasure to give us the Kingdom now. 

To " cultivate " one's body or mind or soul are 
only other plans of cultivating " self." The 
thing is to love and then one wants to work and 
learn and teach with muscle and thought and 
soul, so as to express the love — ^then all these gain 
permanent natural strength. Spiritual and 
mental gymnastics are as miserable substitutes 
for work as " calisthenics." 

How can we have higher ideals when our ac- 
knowledged teachers admit that the highest per- 
fection of man consists in the number and devel- 
opment of all sides of his refined desires. Such 



LIFE, AND 82 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

teaching makes men think that they feel only 
such desires, and that as these are natural, it is 
impossible to rise above them. 

Says Henry Drummond: 

" Seekest thou great things for thyself? " 
Said the prophet, " Seek them not." Why? Be- 
cause there is no greatness in things. Things 
cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish 
love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is al- 
most a mistake. Only a great purpose or a 
mightier love can justify the waste. 

We know the saying of the Greek philosopher, 
"I like to go to the market-place and see how 
many things there are which I do not need." 

The desires have their proper place. Evolu- 
tion is through desires. These desires may be 
mainly physical, as a desire for warmth; or 
mainly intellectual, as a desire for learning; or 
emotional, as the desire for experience. It is not 
the renunciation of our individual desires that is 
required, but their subjection to the higher rea- 
son or " Wisdom." Herein is the true law of 
life. 

Belief in this law is not merely an intellectual 



83 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

perception arrived at by study. If it were, it 
might be found by examining matter. It is a 
spiritual understanding, and is perceived by a 
spiritual illumination, which can be had by any 
one who opens his soul to it by willingness to re- 
ceive and act in accordance with the law of life. 
Entrance into life, and the course of life, is like 
the experience of a horse which the master leads 
from the stable for harnessing; on coming out 
of the stable into the light and scenting liberty, 
it seems to the horse that in that liberty is life, yet 
he is harnessed and driven off. He feels a 
weight behind him, and, if he thinks that his life 
consists in running wild, he begins to kick, falls 
down, and indeed may kill himself. But if he 
does not fall, he has two alternatives left to him ; 
either he will go his way and draw his load, find- 
ing that the burden is light to him, and that trot- 
ting is not a torment but a joy; or else he will 
kick himself free, and then his master will lead 
him to the treadmill, and will fasten him by a hal- 
ter ; the platform will begin to slide beneath him, 
and he will walk in the dark, confined to one place, 
suifering; but his strength will not be wasted; 



LIFE, AND 84, 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

he will perform his unwilling labor, and the law 
will be fulfilled in him. The difference will lie 
in this, that the first work would be joyful, but 
the second forced and painful. 

The satisfaction of all simple, normal wants, 
is guaranteed to man, as it is to the bird and the 
flower; provided that in man's sphere, which in- 
cludes the economic and social life, man shall 
hve a simple, reasonable life, as animals do in 
their spheres. (See Matthew vi. 20, to end.*) 

The larger part of mankind believes this truth, 
under the name of Buddhism ; but the vast spread 
of that religion renders it subject to corruptions, 

* No one can yet see how far reaching freedom will be. 

Krapotkin has shown that if only the wastes of production 
and distribution were saved, a few hours' labor per day would 
produce all that we produce now. ("The Conquest of Bread.") 

If, in addition to this saving, the land, including all the re- 
sources of Nature, were opened to labor, so that all workers would 
use the best parts of the earth to the best advantage, wealth 
would be so abundant that interest would disappear. 

Even now, with increased production, and notwithstanding the 
restrictions in the issue of money, interest is decreasing so that 
we often find it hard to get four per cent. 

Suppose that to-day mortgages and railroad bonds, which are 
forms of ownership of land, were taken out of the market, what 
interest would we get? Certainly not one per cent. 

Were the restrictions on production through the various forms 
of taxation and monopoly, above all, private appropriation of rent. 



85 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

and these corruptions are regarded by cultured 
persons as disproving the truth of the reUgion 
itself. 

The fact that the larger part of mankind does 
so understand the law of life, and gets, from its 
observance, quiet of mind; and that it is impos- 
sible to reach an understanding of life in any 
other way, does not in the least trouble the Phari- 
sees and Scribes: they think that progress and 

abolished, wealth would be so abundant and so easy to obtain, that 
it would not be worth anyone's while to keep account of what he 
" lent " to another. 

With the disappearance at once of interest and of the fear of 
poverty, the motive for accumulation of more than would be 
suflficient to provide against disability or old age will disappear; 
while such small but universal accumulations, made available by 
a system of mutual banking, will provide ample capital for all 
needed enterprises. 

Co-operation will spring up, as a labor-saving device, and the 
great abilities of the Trust managers will be turned to public 
service instead of public plunder. 

Henry George thinks that the increased demand for capital due 
to free opportunities for labor will increase interest. If it did, 
it would perpetuate a form of slavery; but the very use of the 
capital will re-produce wealth and capital so much more abun- 
dantly, that it will destroy the motive for accumulation. 

The time will come, it is even now at hand, when dollars and 
meals and goods will be given to those who ask them, as freely as 
candies or water or cigars are offered among us. 

If Socialism or Anarchism or anything else is needed to insure 
voluntary communism of goods, then it is for that Sociahsm or 
Anarchism, or whatever it may be, that we should work. 



LIFE, AND 86 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

invention have superseded such old-time "theo- 
ries." 

The Hindoo sees that there is a conflict be- 
tween the life for the flesh and the higher life, 
and he is solving the difficulty according to his 
light. So far he truly lives. But the modern 
materialist is like a beast which does not yet per- 
ceive that there is any higher life. 

Yet the perception of the universal life is the 
most valuable product of the experience of the 
ages. 

There is this distinction, however, between the 
states of beasts and of men. The higher the ani- 
mal is, the more complex are its parts and the 
more dependent are the parts upon one another. 
If a worm is cut in two, we have two worms; if 
the higher animal is cut in two, it is all dead. So 
with the state of mankind. The bird and the fish 
live, from their nature, each to itself; each is but 
slightly dependent upon any other; each suff*ers 
for its errors mainly in itself. With the higher 
organism of Man the parts are more dependent 
upon one another. Interior happiness, therefore, 
we can get each for himself, by opening our eyes 



87 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

to perceive and follow our real nature. " Peace 
I give unto you," said Jesus. That is the in- 
terior peace : exterior well-being we can get only 
by inducing our fellows also to come out into 
the light. We are an army marching together, 
in which " No one of us liveth to himself and no 
man dieth to himself." 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE HIGHER LIFE 

" If in the one hand I were offered wisdom and goodness, 
and in the other hand the power of striving for it, I should 
prefer to strive." — Lessing. 

THE argument of pessimistic philosophy, 
and of the commonplace suicides, is that 
there is one " I," in which " I " there is an incli- 
nation for full animal and intellectual life; and 
that this " I " and its inclination cannot possibly 
be gratified. They think there is a second " I " 
which has no inclination for life, seeing the use- 
lessness of it all. 

If, say they, I yield to the being which in- 
clines to animal life, I live senselessly ; there is no 
good in it: if I yield to the being which sees the 
futility of life, there remains to me no desire for 
life (for the second "I " does not believe that it 
is good to live for love or to express the universal 
spirit) ; therefore, say such persons, when life 

88 



89 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

becomes tiresome I leave it. This is " the dark- 
ness which comprehendeth not the light." This 
is the contradictory idea of life which men had 
reached before Solomon's time, before Buddha's, 
and to which teachers like Schopenhauer and 
Hartmann would lead us back. 

The teaching of the Truth has ever been that 
mankind does possess, here and now, an inalien- 
able and actual happiness which is within the reach 
of everyone. This is the happiness which is fa- 
miliar to everyone, and to which every unper- 
verted human soul is drawn. Children and the 
unsophisticated know the feeling which solves all 
the contradictions of life, and gives the greatest 
possible happiness: this is Love. (See Appen- 
dix I.) 

Love IS one form of the animal nature brought 
under the rule of the higher law. Its develop- 
ment is the only reasonable activity of mankind. 

The foundation of all happiness is faith in the 
goodness, the righteousness and the Love-power 
of the individual, which is also the universal 
spirit. 

The personality of man demands happiness; 



LIFE, AND 90 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

true reason from the heart shows us the misery 
of strife; shows us that there can be no happi- 
ness in selfishness, and that the only real happi- 
ness possible for us is one for which there shall 
be no rivalry, no satiety, and no end. 

And lo, like a key made for this one lock, each 
man finds in his own soul a feeling which gives 
him the very happiness which his reasonable heart 
tells him is the only possible one. This Love 
not only solves the contradictions of life, but 
uses the contradictions of life to show itself 
clearly; for the animal individual suffers, and to 
remedy this suffering constitutes the chief activ- 
ity of Love. 

So doing, it gives sight to the eyes, and Hear- 
ing to the ears to perceive that life is not a cry 
but a song. 

The individual strives to use others, but Love 
gives itself joyously to others, and inclines us 
to the extremest sacrifice of our fleshly existence 
for others, and so, by developing that which is 
immortal, takes away the fear of death. 

" But," say those who see nothing in this life 
but the animal existence, " love involves pain 



91 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

while it lasts, and it will end." Therefore, to 
them love seems as lamentable and as deceptive 
as all other states of mind, though they recognize 
in it something peculiar and more important 
than the others ; often it seems to them something 
irregular and torturing. Something like this 
feeling must be the effect of a lighthouse upon 
the night birds. 

This misconception is because such persons 
think of Love as only one among the numberless 
desires of life, and not as the object of life. 

They think that a man should sometimes make 
money, sometimes study, sometimes love. They 
think only of that love which is a form of selfish- 
ness ; the sacrificing of others for " my child," or 
" my friend " ; that feeling which makes the 
father, to his own torture, wring the last bit of 
bread from hungry men in order to provide lav- 
ishly for his own children. It is the feeling be- 
cause of which, he who loves a woman suffers 
through this love, and causes her to suffer, se- 
ducing her, or killing both her and himself be- 
cause of jealousy. It is the feeling that impels 
men belonging to one association, for the sake of 



LIFE, AND 92 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

upholding their own fellows, to injure those of 
other associations. It is the feeling that makes 
a man render himself, and others, also, miserable 
over his favorite occupation. It is the feeling 
that renders a man unable to endure an insult 
to his " beloved " fatherland, strewing therefore 
the plain with the dead and wounded of his own 
country and of others. 

But to love truly means to desire the well- 
being of all. For those whom we love we desire 
good, but we find that to get that good for them 
alone means the injury, or at least the neglect, 
of others. 

How far, then, am I to give myself for the 
service of others, and whom shall I serve? How 
much care shall I now take of myself in order to 
be able later, since I love others, to serve them? 

This was the difiicult question that the law- 
yer put to Christ, " Who is my neighbor? " For 
we must know that in the world as we have made 
it, every happiness in the flesh is received by one 
person only at the expense of the possible hap- 
piness which might be obtained by another, or 
which, at least, might be given to another. 



gS LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

How, then, are we to decide at whose expense, 
and in which degree, we shall help those whom it 
is necessary to serve? All people, or our father- 
land? Fatherland, or our friends? Our friends, 
or our own wives? Our wives, or our children? 
Our children, or (in order that we may be able 
still further to serve others later) ourselves? 

All these persons make demands of love, and 
all the demands are so interwoven that there is no 
possibility of serving some without depriving 
others. 

For these difficulties, that which the world calls 
love, offers no solution. Most of the evils 
among men spring from this feeling, falsely 
called love, and which is no more like real love 
than the life of the animal is like the life of man. 
What people generally call love is only the fa- 
miliar preference of some elements of our per- 
sonal happiness to other elements. When a man 
says that he loves his wife or child or friend, 
he usually means merely that the presence of 
those persons heightens the happiness of his in- 
dividual life. Just so, he says he loves to shoot 
or to see a good fight. 



LIFE, AND 94, 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

But these feelings, preference for certain 
beings, or things, or occupations, cannot be called 
love ; for they have not the chief mark of love — 
activity, which has for its aim and end the hap- 
piness of the loved one. 

This violence of preference for some people 
over others is merely the stock upon which true 
love and its offshoots may be grafted. It is 
through this love that we attain to Unity, to be 
one with the Father, and the Son — as Jesus 
says so often in the fourteenth to the eighteenth 
of John. 



CHAPTER IX 

UNITY 

The kingdoms of living matter and of not-living matter 
are under one system of laws, and there is a perfect free- 
dom of exchange and transit from one to the other. — T. H. 
Huxley, " Collected Essays," Vol. I., page 117. 

WE must agree upon the meaning of 
Unity. 

There are three stages in the life of man — the 
physical, the mental and the spiritual, each a law 
unto itself. And we should recognize the limita- 
tions of anyone who is a physical man, and 
" judge not." He may be more moral in his im- 
morality than we are moral in our morality, for 
he may be truer to his light than we are to ours. 

We cannot ask him to give up what to him are 
truths, because they are false to us. As long as 
he thinks they are gods, we should offend in in- 
fluencing him to sacrifice his gods to our god. 
He would offend in doing it. He must live on 
and through his physical plane ; he must grow as 

95 



LIFE, AND QQ 

LOVE, AND PEACE 



the flowers grow; live in everything pertaining 
to that plane till he of his own free will grows, as 
the race grows, into another plane. We must 
not force our brother's growth before his time.* 

We can see that there is no moral law as a fixed 
rule of life. Moral law is true only to that plane 
of life to which it is akin, and false to the next 
higher plane. The savage man must fight, if he 
is to survive and preserve his family; to refuse 
would be wrong for him. So, to the physical 
plane, even the morality of the mental plane may 
be sin. If one on the spiritual plane tried to wake 
his brother who is only as yet on the physical 
plane, he but opens the rose with a penknife and 
causes violent retrogression. It is natm^al for the 
snake to sting according to snake nature, and for 
the drunkard to drink. There is no use in con- 
demning either of them. 

The purpose of Nature is not primarily to do 
good. That is only an incident. The purpose of 
Nature is self-expression, that is to say, the ex- 

* " Gott mit uns " the partisan cries. — *' The Lord is on our 
side." "God and one are a majority," says Emerson — God is on 
both sides and we do not need the majority. 



97 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

pression of God. ^ The bird expresses itself in 
the song and in the life of the bird. 

Expression — "being one's self" — is first: 
good flows from it : so the physical man must live 
and express the physical desires till, through liv- 
ing all that the physical man expresses, he grows 
into the mental plane, and hves in the expression 
and morality of the mental plane. From the 
mental plane he grows into the spiritual plane, 
and there, as from a mountain, he sees all that 
which is underneath his feet — all that he has sur- 
mounted. He is above moraUty, and love be- 
comes to him the fulfilling of the law of his being. 
On that plane he realizes his Unity. The Unity 
of the physical man, the mental man, the spiritual 
man, is not denying the mental man ; it is affirm- 
ing and partaking of all three stages. Personal 
harmony comes first — a Unity of body, mind and 
spirit in one's self. 

This harmony is joying in one's food; it is joy- 
ing in one's body — living so that all food is as 
milk and honey, the ambrosia of the gods, — that 
all pleasures of the body satisfy ; it is an exceed- 
ing fineness of the senses, an exceeding sensitive- 



LIFE, AND 98 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ness of the nerves that thrill to all the joy of the 
senses, beyond the faintest comprehension of the 
physical man. It intensifies the joy of bodily 
exercise — the exhilaration of a swim or a climb, 
— the pleasure of seeing beautiful persons and 
things — of hearing the music in nature, the thrill 
of human touch — ^in short, the all around alive- 
ness of the animal. Mental activity is good; and 
spiritual life is good, but not better, only differ- 
ent : all three are ours. That is, we are not sub- 
ject to the senses, but have greater power and 
delicacy in their expression — we being master. 
We hear more harmonies in Nature; sweeter to 
us become the tones of our brother's voice. 

So the spiritual man will express the joy of 
Kfe. 

The morality of evolution is not like any other 
morality. It is essentially the Joy of Life, into 
which the spiritual man is born. Joy of Life 
comes because of the universal life ; the soul sings 
the song of joy because of the joyousness that 
is the inheritance of the spiritual man. 

Jesus showed this clearly. Understanding the 
long journey through which the physical and 



99 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

mental man travelled, He was sore afraid; still 
from His vision of this spiritual man He said, 
" These things have I spoken unto you that my 
joy might remain in you, and that your joy might 
be full." 

He had Joy! the great word — full of sunlight 
and dancing waters, of summer clouds and sing- 
ing birds. Full of the sweetness of life, the de- 
hght of being. 

Joy demands more life, and it takes it. Its 
test of what is good, aye, of what is loving, is 
more life, sweeter life, an ascending life. To 
deny life is asceticism. Asceticism is death 
— is decadence. It is rejecting of the Father's 
bounty. It is to refuse to eat at the Father's 
table. It is to turn away from Nature's gifts, 
thinking we may please the Spirit thereby. 

Asceticism is degrading and weakening; it 
is the denial of the joy of life. The joy of life is 
in harmony with God's law — His life. Can we 
imagine His denying Himself of all His Crea- 
tion? No, He lives and joys in it; He works in 
it every moment of eternity. Can we imagine 
God working without joying in His work? 



LIFE, AND 100 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Jesus said: "My Father worketh hitherto, and 
I work." The Father needs each one of us in the 
work. The birds and the fishes, and the least as 
well as the greatest of His children He has need 
of, to fulfill and to fill full His work. Not a 
sparrow falleth to the ground but the Father 
knoweth, and not one atom can He afford to 
lose. " That v/hich made me therefore meant 
me." All is in the Father's plan of Oneness. 

Do you think the Father loves one child more 
than another? Can the Father enter Home until 
all the children are in, even to the least of them? 
The Father needs hands held out, just as the 
motherhood needs and longs for the little hands 
held up — yes, even the dirty, naughty little 
hands. 

We are not carried in the arms of God, we are 
the arms of God. And so the Father worketh 
even unto now, worketh through us to will and 
to do whatever we ought to do. 

Work! How? Not on a treadmill, but with 
the power of life, to express it as it is expressed 
in a bird, in its fullness in you and me ; to express 
the great, sweet joy of life, the joy of a Creator 



101 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

through all our desires in myriads of ways; not 
denying our desires but fulfilling them. 

In the Joy of Life is the happiness we desire : 
we cannot find happiness by seeking; happiness 
is an effect and not a cause. Only as we love and 
work with all our heart and all our soul and all 
our mind does happiness flow from the doing of 
that w^ork. You love your boy, not because of 
the happiness that loving may bring you, but be- 
cause of what he expresses: then that loving 
brings happiness. You do not say " I love him 
because it will make me happy." But you are 
happy because you love. If he were sick and in 
many ways caused you anxiety, still the loving 
him would, with all the anxiety, be your happi- 
ness. 

It is the samp with the Nihilists. They so love 
the thought of freedom that their only happiness 
is in working for that freedom, even when they 
know it means for them the horrors of Siberia. 
And out of the torture and suffering they return 
to preach again. It is love of the work, joy in 
the work, and happiness arises as an incident, not 
as a cause. 



LIFE, AND 102 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

God could not seek happiness, the joyousness 
of life, to be made happy Himself; but happi- 
ness, joyousness, comes of the loving, because 
loving is the fulfilling of the law of life. The 
thing sought is loving. 

Because of Unity perfect harmony is hap- 
piness. 

Because of Unity, perfect satisfaction is the 
Joy of Life. 

Because of Unity in the physical, mental and 
spiritual man; because of Oneness in all things, 
do we evolve the keynote, the heart and life and 
soul of the whole system, namely, loving. 

Therefore, strange as it may seem, there is to 
the understanding heart no ethical system; no 
room for an ethical system. Love transcends all 
ethics. In the same sense Jesus had no ethical 
system. Christianity teaches to-day what the 
apostles taught. Jesus' doctrines were coarsened 
by the Jewish understanding: Jesus taught one 
thing: the disciples said another. Nowhere did 
Jesus teach an ethical system, as the Jews taught. 
All he said was " Love one another. — Love is 
the fulfiUing of the Law." 



108 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

He drank and ate with men; He entered into 
their life; and because of His realization of fel- 
lowship He saw that Love was the only ethics 
possible, the only life possible; that out of the 
heart of Love flowed all possibilities beyond the 
rules of ethics. He worked as the Father worked. 

The mind of the Universe brooded over things. 
" And every plant of the field before it was in the 
earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.^' 
All existing in the Mind — till Thought came to 
manifestation. " And God saw everything that 
He had made, and behold, it was very good." 
Says Kant, " God is the unitary principle that 
fashions things, but is not merged in things." 
(Paulsen's Kant.) 

All thoughts are of the nature of the mind 
that creates them. Therefore, the thought that 
brought the birds into being is akin and at one 
with the thought that evolved an Emerson, a 
Shakespeare. It is a difference only in degree, 
not in kind. 

We are One. One with every living thing, for 
all things are Thought brought to manifestation. 
It is not that the Fellowship does not already 



LIFE, AND 104 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

exist — ^but that we have not come to a realization 
of it. 

A feeling of separateness is misery. When we 
feel Unity, harmony — ^then we are in the univer- 
sal, and '* Love speaks to our minds and souls, 
and we know." Then we know our little brothers 
of the fields — in the air and in the sea — as well as 
the human brother at our side. 

It is this brotherliness with every living thing 
that prevents so many from eating meat, or kill- 
ing for ornament, or for " sport," that grows 
until our hearts reach out to every living thing to 
become a sharer in our joy. 

It is this brotherliness that makes men and 
women devote their lives to economic freedom. 
They suffer in the suffering of others; they see 
and feel with their brother in slavery more than 
he sees and feels for himself; because from the 
higher nature they see what might be — a vision 
the lower 'natures cannot see. We feel with our 
brother and suffer with him in his ignorance. So 
far as we do feel with him, we become one with 
him — one in his suffering — one in his crime — one 
in his purity — in badness as truly as goodness — 



105 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

equally guilty in tjie lowest vices — equally inno- 
cent as the babe. As we partake of all the good 
of the past, we inherit the evil. 

" I, Buddha, that wept with all men's tears, 
Whose heart was broken in the whole world's 
woe." 

Such is our Oneness that none of us can 
enter heaven while even the least of humanity is 
on the road of experience. Not that an arch- 
angel prevents us entering the Gate — ^but we pre- 
vent ourselves; we would not if we could. Vol- 
untarily and with joy we refuse to enter heaven 
until all men enter in. 

It is like our social experience; however high 
our ideal, however we may desire to experience it, 
to love it, we are limited, hampered in the living 
actual expression of that ideal, so long as our 
brother does not see it. We must, because of our 
identity with him, partake of and share in his 
ignorance — ^be guilty with him.* 

If it were possible to separate ourselves from 
our brother by our death, while he is living in 

* We see a policeman or some kind of ruffian beating a man or 
a child ; our blood boils — ^it is we that are doing it. " I would not 
do such a thing," we say. No — did we never beat our children or. 



LIFE, AND 106 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

falseness and all manner of sin, heaven would 
become hell. It would be hell until we were freed 
to return to earth, and to live in those false con- 
ditions, partaking of his evil, his guilt, going with 
the brother through the mire of crime. 

It was this magnetic power which Jesus 
preached when he said, " And I, if I be lifted up 
(with Love) , will draw all men unto me. That 
they may be one even as we are one. I in them 
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in 
One. We will come unto him and make 
our abode with him — 'till all have entered the 
door.' " 

Do not fret over the troubles of others — there 

worse yet, did we never get someone else to beat them, as indi- 
rectly we got that policeman to beat the woman? 

Who paid that policeman to do it? We did — out of the taxes. 
What spirit does he represent? The spirit of authority, the desire 
to make someone, to force someone, to do or to be something. 

If we make laws, we must have force behind them, and as the 
laws are not intelligent, we must have intelligent force behind 
them. 

Because that spirit of man, good and bad, loving and hating, 
is what it is to-day, you and I are what we are to-day. For any- 
one to have felt as most of us feel now, would have been impossi- 
ble even two hundred years ago — when no one was shocked by 
drawings and quarterings and burnings at the stake, and 
only inquired, if they inquired at all, whether the person 
"deserved" it. 



107 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

are no "others";* do not worry over your own — 
if you did not need them you would not have 
them. 

For there are only three possible ways that the 
Universe runs: either it is a series of accidents — 
if so, then we need only catch the fleeting pleas- 
ure as it comes ; or, there is a ruling Principle that 
takes satisfaction in torturing us — in that case 
to steel ourselves to pain and to cultivate every 
pleasure, is still the wisest course; or, there is a 
Spirit in Things (whether all powerful or not, 
does not matter) , that works together for good, 
that moves ever towards development and a wider 
circle of joy. It is not " in the end " that " it will 
all come out right," it is all right now. Then it 
is om's only to find, and joyfully to walk in, the 
path of the Spirit. 

There is nothing but God — ^nothing. God is 
all in all, " we are of one flesh." " I in him, and 
ye in me, that we all may be one." 

God is Love and God is Good. Therefore, 
there is no good but Love (and no evil but Self- 
love, i,e,j narrow or undeveloped Love), and we 
need nothing for ourselves. 



LIFE, AND 108 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

We are expressions of God. Therefore, there 
is no Law but Love. " Love is the fulfilling of 
the law " (hence we are not to be afraid of any 
expressions of Love). 



T 



CHAPTER X 

FREEDOM THROUGH UNITY 

HE Mahomedan cries, 'La Allah ilia 
Allah,"—" There is no God but God," or 
better, " there is nothing but God." He does 
not believe in any other force in the universe 
but the Universal Mind, and, whatever happens, 
he saj^Sv " Kismet," "it is so determined." The 
God-Mind is in our actions, too, " working in us 
both to will and to do of his good pleasure." 

That was the message of Jesus, — that we all 
"may be one." One in love (John xvii. 21). 
Jesus is the typical spirit man. Everyone is 
brother to Him : he quotes from Psalm Ixxxii. 6, 
" I said ye are gods, and all of you are the chil- 
dren of the Most High." So we may read those 
five chapters, John xiii.-xviii., substituting " I " 
and " we " for the name of Christ. " We in them 
and Thou in us, that they may be made perfect 
in one " (John xvii. 23) ; the spirit made perfect 
but hated of " the world," the merely mental man, 

109 



LIFE, AND 110 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

and at war with " the flesh," the purely animal. 
Yet the spirit embraces all of these — is one. 

Now how is that oneness to be obtained? The 
way is plain. " If ye keep my commandments 
ye shall abide in my love " (xv. 10) ; and " this is 
my commandment, that ye love one another" 
(xv. 12). "God is Love"; so loving, we abide 
in God, are God, and abide in life ; for " this is 
life eternal, that we should know the only true 
God " (xvii. 3) ; and " he that loveth knoweth 
God"; so we are delivered from the power of 
death, and eternally we " shall know that I am 
(we are) in the Father and ye in me (us) and I 
in you" (xiv. 20). 

That unity is the sum of the whole matter. See 
the effects of it. " All things that the Father 
hath are Mine " (xvi. 15), " and we are in Him 
and He in them, that all (creation) may be one." 

If we are one with God, and one with the Mind 
of the Universe, then " whatsoever ye shall ask in 
my name that will I do " (xiv. 14). "Ye shall 
ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you " 
(xv. 7) , for we are one." " All mine are thine, — 
thine are mine." 



1111 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

But then we shall know that we need nothing 
for ourselves; and "in that day (when we see 
Him, the Universal Spirit, the Spirit as it is) ye 
shall ask me nothing " (xvi. 23) . Why should we 
ask, when we are one with the Word of God and 
are possessing everything? 

Nirvana has been corrupted, at least in modern 
and occidental understanding, to mean the ex- 
tinction of desire. It means in truth, the union 
with the All, the extinction of separateness, which 
we call cosmic consciousness. In that state desire 
is extinguished only because it is fully realized 
in the possession of all, that is because we are 
united with All in the One. 

So we can understand the verse, every need 
being satisfied. "These things have I spoken 
unto you that my joy might remain in you, and 
that your joy might be full" (xv. 11) — "that 
in Me (in you and me, all one) ye might have 
peace " (xv. 33) . And so said Jesus, " a man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief," whose face 
was " more marred than any man's," who " came 
unto his own and his own received him not," 
and who had so failed to make even his disciples 



LIFE, AND 112 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

understand his word that they said, " Show us 
the Father and it suffice th us" (xiv. 8), not 
knowing that they themselves were one with the 
Father. So he said, and we say, " Peace I leave 
with you, my peace I give unto you" (xiv. 27), 
" that we may have this joy fulfilled in ourselves " 
(xvii. 13). 

Think of that, and of the circumstances under 
which it was said. On that last night, with His 
few poor followers, of whom one was betraying 
Him, all were to forsake Him, and not one un- 
derstood Him; but He said, " Peace I leave with 
you, my peace I give unto you." They did not 
understand that any more than they had under- 
stood Him: one said, " Show us the Father (who 
is the God of Love)," and He said (we can hear 
the despair in his voice), **Have I been so long 
time with you and how sayest thou, " Show us the 
Father." " He that hath seen (love in) me hath 
seen the Father." 

He had failed to make even those few chosen 
ones understand what was so clear to Him, that 
if men would only love one another all the evil 
of life would be at an end ; and now, facing that 



113 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

failure He spoke, He, a beaten man, a felon al- 
ready condemned, and said, *' I speak that they 
might have my joy fulfilled in themselves." 

For He alone understood in what joy consists 
and how love could give eternal life. 

Isn't that simple and clear? Hate is separa- 
tion, but unity is love, and the " love is the ful- 
filling of the law." It is beautiful to understand 
that we are one, all of us, and that " nothing can 
happen to us, for we have nothing to do with hap- 
penings "; to live in a love that is the substance 
of everything without regard to any reward or 
return. " Self is cut out from the horizon of 
thought and purpose — we do not value our per- 
sonal existence, — we have no interests, — we live 
in a universal communion of love." We do not 
come into this state ; we are in it if we only see. 



CHAPTER XI 

DUTY 

Against the one who laughs and the one who loves, there 
is no defense. 

DUTY, stern daughter of the Voice of 
God," was the earlier idea of the religious 
motive force. It was an advance on the motive 
of mere fear, and as long as we are slavish enough 
to need such motives, they are most useful. We 
always forge for ourselves, and for our fellows 
too, the chains that we need : but there is a higher 
conception than that. " Every man is the 
prophet of Gk)d, joyfully if willingly, otherwise 
with pain." We must do the Universal will and 
fit into the general plan; the only difference we 
can make in it is that we may do it either happily 
or reluctantly. 

We have one definition of God — one on which 
every living religion agrees, that God is love — 
not has love, or is loving, but is Love. Men say, 



115 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Yes, God is Lov^; but He is more than Love — 
He is Justice and Truth and Power. 

Justice! — is not that involved in Love? Could 
the universal, unselfish love be untrue to anyone? 
Love is the Infinite Harmony, the Perfect Truth. 
Power — there is no force like Love. "Love 
comprehendeth all." " Love overcometh all." 

Then if God is Love, to love is to worship 
Him : it is to express our admiration of His char- 
acter: to walk in His way: the ritual of His 
house is the service of His children. That is our 
"duty." 

Of course if there were a God who had wishes 
or desires that are opposed to our good, that is, to 
our eventual happiness, it might be necessary to 
do things for Him that were not loving for the 
sake of duty. It might be that certain things 
that injure us would be pleasing to such a 
deity. 

Here is an invalid woman who thinks that she 
" ought " to get up early and go fasting to 
church: of course as long as she believes that it 
is right for her to do that, she had better do it, 
even if it leave her irritable or otherwise useless 



LIFE, AND 116 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

all day. Or she may feel that she needs discom- 
fort and that this way of getting it does her the 
most good. If so, there can be no objection to 
her getting it ; even to the irritation we can object 
only if it be expressed. 

Or again she may think that if she allows any 
other thing or person to prevent the act of wor- 
ship to her God, He will take away that thing or 
hurt that person. If she so believes, she is en- 
titled to make her bargain or to protect herself 
by going to church. 

Or, still further, she might feel that, without 
perhaps knowing very clearly why, somehow she 
was better for doing it and that God would sup- 
ply the strength. If she sincerely believes that 
in her heart, probably the strength would be sup- 
plied. 

But she might look at it thus : " My Father 
loves me and wishes me to do what is for the good 
of His world and for my happiness : it cannot be 
pleasing to one who loves me and whom I love, 
that I should hurt myself or make myself incap- 
able of helping others whom I love. Instead of 
going to that service I will keep my strength for 



117 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

the service of Go<i that is demanded of me at 
home, and will find other means or another occa- 
sion of expressing my devotion to the Church." 

She would then do for joy that which other- 
wise would have been a toil, learning to take up 
the yoke of Life that is easy, and the burden of 
Love that is light. 

Perhaps the chief reason that we profit so little 
by experience is that we are unwilling to acknowl- 
edge even to ourselves, that we have been mis- 
taken and have wasted time and perhaps sacri- 
ficed much in vain. 

But we must remember that what seems to us 
wise or right now and which we regret that we did 
not do, only now seems to us wise or right be- 
cause of our experience, of which the mistakes are 
a part. So, if we have been stern or harsh in the 
past, that is no reason for continuing the course 
that once seemed to us best; for now we see in 
the light of that opened door that there is a larger 
door. 

You are not Vice-God : so lay down the burden 
of the world. Why should you carry it? If 
another brings you a burden, take it from him 



LIFE, AND 118 

LOVE, AND PEACE 



and lay it down, if he does not know enough to 
lay it down himself. 

If you do not enjoy your work, do not do it. 
You are only making yourself disagreeable. 
Any service that is done for pure love is agree- 
able and no service that is done for any other 
reason is dear either to Man or God. 



I 






CHAPTER XII 

THE BEAUTY OF MAN 

WE have learned about the beauty of Na- 
ture ; we can never learn too much about 
it. The rich make long journeys to see Nature: 
they do well to make them. They go far and 
wide and seek hither and thither the wonders of 
Nature and of divine forms, while the clouds, 
and the trees, and the curls of smoke are every- 
where. But we have not thought enough about 
the supreme expression of Nature's beauty,' the 
beauty of ordinary men. The beauty of the 
healthy, strong-framed body fills one with 
ecstasy. 

" The negro that drives the dray of the stone-yard — 
steady and tall he stands, poised on one leg on the string- 
piece . . . 

" I behold the picturesque giant and love him. 

** The love of healthy women for the manly form." 

In our souls and in our bodies we feel the re- 
sponse to human beauty. That is a narrow view 
that attributes the beauty of figure and of color- 

119 



LIFE, AND J 20 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ing to the selection by the sexes of the most 
charming mates. Mind produces Life, that re- 
produces its kind with the beauty of Life; and 
of figure and coloring. 

Mind produces everything ; for everything is a 
form of life ; everything has a beauty of its own. 
It is natural that the mind that makes the beau- 
tiful product should itself perceive its beauty, 
and joy in the beauty it has built. 

Consider the amazing things that man can do 
with his body ! See the college boys cheering over 
the records that they and their mates have broken. 
Such surpassing strength and control of the mus- 
cles! See the gymnasts and the athletes of the 
circus. What they do, would be within our 
power had we willed and wanted it keenly. 
Nothing is really beyond the growing powers of 
the mind of Man. What are the feats of the 
acrobats, but the force of mind showing through 
our machines of blood and sinew? 

Greater even than these is the beauty of the 
fine intellect, with powers so far beyond ours 
that we should feel discouraged if we did not 
know that it is the same mind that is in us. 






121 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

We share in it ^11, not only in the results of its 
discoveries but in their creation. For the desires 
and thought and admiration of ordinary persons 
are necessary to make the attainments of the ex- 
traordinary person possible. 

Do we envy the genius that does the wonderful 
things? Why should the arm be envious of the 
shoulder's strength? If the beauty and grandeur 
of Shakespeare had come to life among the Hot- 
tentots, it would have been buried there. By 
himself, even Shakespeare would be a shadow; 
every mind of ours that joys in him, mirrors and 
multiplies his excellence. 

But the beauty of the body is not the greatest 
beauty of all, and the beauty of the mind is not 
the greatest beauty of all. The beauty of the 
hearts of men and women that expresses itself 
through the body, and through the mind, and 
through the subtle aura of the soul, is the great- 
est beauty of all. 

No sunset or rose or range of hills has the 
divine beauty of a gentle youth or a loving girl, 
and this beauty is intensified where maturer years 
add constancy and power to its expression in de- 



LIFE, AND 122 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

meaner and thought and deed. When a long life 
has been lived full of sweetness and kindness we 
look in the eyes of such, of an old man perhaps, 
or of a motherly woman, and we see the eyes of 
Christ. 

But the closer we look, says someone, the more 
imperfections we see. Yes — ^the children are still 
undeveloped ; but they will grow — ^we are all but 
children of larger growth. 

Every healthy baby is gluttonous, or peevish, 
or submissive, or passionate, or regardless of 
others. We do not therefore think it is a detest- 
able child. Poor little lamb ! These faults and 
crimes at least, we know are natural. They will 
be outgrown as ours have been outgrown. Nay, 
we love the little one so, that we can hardly be 
persuaded that these are faults at all. With lov- 
ing understanding we grow blind to defects. 
We see that this evil is really good; shapeless but 
crystallizing good. 

But there seems to be a difference — the child 
knows no better, but the man does know better, 
or at least he ought to. But we cannot always do 
what we know. We know in our minds how to 



I 



12S LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

draw a straight lyie, or a square, but our fingers 
do not know. In the same way, although we rec- 
ognize that it is best to forgive and forget and 
even wish to do it, few of us are able to suffer 
long and be kind. We are not yet so far devel- 
oped spiritually. 

Perhaps you are discouraged and disgusted 
with human nature because you have found graft, 
malice, deceit or selfishness in some, where you 
did not expect it. We shall find that to see those 
things is not a reason for despondency, but rather 
for encouragement. 

If we resent those things because they injure 
us, we are to remember that, as Stevenson says, 
" one person I have to make good — ^that is my- 
self." No one can really injure us, for he, 
also, is in the hands of the Spirit; he can only 
give us one more experience, one more chance to 
learn. Really the world of men is as harmonious 
as the world of nature, for each is a part of one 
world, each is an expression of the same spirit, 
and it is our business to perceive the harmony 
and to feel ourselves a part of it. 

If we go up Broadway taking the left side of 



LIFE, AND 124 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

the street, we shall be jostled and abused at every 
step. Shall we then say that the people are rude 
and brutal? No, rather take the right side and 
we shall find that our way is easy, and shall find 
plenty of room for our courtesy and for example 
in ordering our ways so as to help others instead 
of opposing them. 

But if we resent what we call wickedness be- 
cause it is low, then we are to remember that it 
seems to us low only because we have a higher 
ideal than that. The animal is not disgusted be- 
cause its fellows are greedy; were he able to re- 
flect, he would think, " Being an animal among 
animals, I must find greediness : that is natural." 
The herdsman is not affected by that greediness: 
he knows that for animals it is just what it ought 
to be, and he even turns it to his advantage. 

"Should the guides be angry with those who 
go astray? " Each acts according to his light, or 
stage of development — ^men do what we call 
wrong because they don't know any better — ^they 
deserve our help and pity rather than our scorn — 
we are relatively only a little beyond them — 



1251 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Nature does not, condemn or despise them or us 
but nurtures all alike. 

Were it not for the faulty, the undeveloped 
and incomplete, we should be unable to appreciate 
the perfection which is the ideal, which is perfect 
love. Neither love nor the expression of love can 
be wasted. " There is that scattereth and yet in- 
creaseth " : the love that we spend, however un- 
worthily received, increases our love. That love 
is happiness. 

There are plain people who grieve because 
their features or their bodies are poor or irregu- 
lar, and there are plain people who never give 
such things a thought, but seek out the beautiful 
and the good in others, till they themselves grow 
into the beauty of holiness, that is to say of love. 

To see this beauty it is necessary only to love. 
We look too carelessly at faces; but we do not 
look carelessly at the faces we love; so when we 
love everyone we see God written large in every 
face. 

Are we seeking this love? We do not need to 
seek for human love, nor to be without it. For 



LIFE, AND 126 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

we have a boundless supply in ourselves. We 
have but to give it freely, like the children, to 
have it poured, a hundred-fold increased, into 
our lives and hearts. 

** The gift is to the giver and comes back most to him. 
The song is to the singer and comes back most to him. 
The love is to the lover and comes back most to him. 
It cannot fail.'* 



PART III— PEACE 



I pray for those whom thou hast given me here? — 

All men and women to be one with me ; 
To soothe, sustain and comfort, love and cheer. 

And draw in loving service nearer thee. 

My sister suffers in a garret bare. 

My brothers labor, grow faint and pine, 

My baby wails for food! I cannot bear it, God, 
For all the babies in the world are mine. 

I cannot eat my daily bread alone. 

Give none to me, if these cannot be fed; 

With them — I stand or fall, for we are one: 
Father, give all of us our daily bread. 

— Margaret Hale, 



CHAPTER XIII 

HOW TO ATTAIN LOVE 

THE possibility of real love begins only when 
man has comprehended that it is futile to 
seek happiness for his animal person. He alone 
understands genuine love who has not only un- 
derstood, but has by his life confessed, that he 
who loves only his own soul loses it, and that he 
who recognizes his soul as one with all, has ever- 
lasting life. 

Love is the union of other beings with one's 
whole self. This state is perfect affection toward 
every person and toward every thing; which is 
part of the life of children, but arises in grown 
persons, only on renunciation. This is the " con- 
fessing of Christ," in our lives. 

Let every man try, at least once, at a moment 
when he is ill-disposed toward other people, to 
say to himself, honestly and from his soul, " It 
is all the same to me, I need nothing "; and even 
if only for a time, to desire nothing for himself; 

129 



LIFE, AND ISO 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

and every man will learn, through this simple in- 
ward experiment, how instantaneously, in pro- 
portion to the honesty of this understanding, all 
malevolence will disappear. Let him notice how 
afterward, affection toward all people and all 
things will gush from his heart, which until that 
time was sealed.* This process corresponds with 
the " denial of evil " of Christian Science. 

Have we some plan that turns out to conflict 
with some plan of others? Either we may insist 
upon our own and gain it ; or we may realize that 
our happiness does not depend on that plan or on 
any material circumstance, and give it up, so as 
to permit the conflicting plan. We shall not lose 
even material benefit by giving it up. 

* In order to teach or to lead or even to drive anyone, it is first 
necessary to overcome any antagonism in ourselves. How would 
a lion tamer get on who allowed himself to get at cross purposes 
or angry with the lion? Long after hatred and jealousy and 
even distrust have disappeared, there remains I think in all of us, 
an easily aroused opposition or "contrariness," that is the great- 
est diflSculty in most families. It prevents the expression and 
therefore the growth of love: it is easy to show the unreasonable- 
ness and ineffectiveness of opposition. But it is one of the pri- 
mary instincts that is hard to get rid of. Hardly an hour passes 
that we do not find some opportunity of practicing at this: it is 
not enough not to be " cross," if we feel cross, we might just as 
well express it as to sulk over it. 



131 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Our plans should aid, not try to take the place 
of the plans of the Nature of Things. It is far 
easier and accomplishes far more to try to fall in 
with the Order of the Universe than to try to 
steer the Universe into our own w^ay. 

For what in truth, do we need for ourselves? 
Do I want a horse? What for? That I may go 
quickly from place to place : that I may have the 
exhilaration of the exercise : that I may gain more 
consideration from others : that I may have a pet, 
something to care for, and, in some degree, to 
care for me. 

But it is not necessary to go quickly from place 
to plaice, much less to worry about it : if the Spirit 
needs me at any place, there is the place that I 
shall be, and if a horse is needed it is not I that 
need it: the power that needs it will provide the 
horse : it may be through my efforts , and mean- 
while, to get to the places where I must go, as the 
Indian said, " I have all the time there is." Go- 
ing to another place can be a blessing only if it 
renders loving service or expresses love, and I 
can express infinite love without such aids as 
that. 



LIFE, AND 132 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Exhilaration, nay, ecstasy is in our reach with- 
out the aid of an animal; nor shall consideration 
come to us from such material things. Only by 
love is the best consideration bought. Love does 
not depend on circumstance. True joy depends 
in no degree upon the things we have: it comes 
to us through loving service only. 

But we need food and clothes. If these be 
withdrawn, then can we only go out of the body, 
and out of the body we shall be in the hands of 
the Spirit the same as before. Until the time 
comes that our power should be so changed, the 
Spirit that clothes the lilies and feeds the birds 
will clothe and feed us too. It will even give us 
power to draw these things to us that are needed 
for the Spirit's work. The quaint story of 
Abraham is written, apparently to convey this 
moral that the necessary sacrifice will be supplied. 
For the things that are required, that which re- 
quires them will provide, through the normal 
and happy efforts of its willing instruments. 

There are others dependent upon us, of whom 
we must take care. But if we die, God can care 
for them without our physical aid. The world 



133 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

got along without us somehow, before we came, 
and the same power that arranged it then, will 
arrange it after we are gone. 

Moreover, what seem to us to be terrible evils 
to those whom we especially love, if there be a 
loving kindness in the world, are only the things 
that the loved ones need. Hardships and sor- 
rows do not happen by chance : they are all " di- 
rection that thou canst not see." There can be no 
chance. If one chance got loose, it would wreck 
the world. 

For there are only three possible views of the 
world: either it is blind chance, or it is under an 
incapable control, or it is all very good, making 
toward harmony. In either case, it is the best 
that can be — as yet. 

If a child should ask its father for candy and 
the father knew that no amount of candy could 
injure the little one, he would be only too glad to 
give it bushels of candy if that would make it 
happier: so with the Spirit. When we can no 
longer be enslaved by things, so that they can do 
us no harm, the Spirit is eager to pour what we 
need into our laps. Why then shall we be anx- 



LIFE, AND 134 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ious about the things for which the Gentiles seek? 
Our Father knoweth when we have need, even of 
such things as these. 

And if those we love be taken from us, in the 
order of the world, the earth is still full of those 
who hunger for the love we spent on them alone 
— that perhaps we wasted on an animal. Per- 
haps it was to teach us this that they were taken 
from us. 

Happiness is in this, and in nothing else: to 
serve the Universal, to be at one with all that is, — 
and for this joyous service the Spirit will provide. 
That day is lost in which we do nothing for man- 
kind — that day misspent in which we do not find 
the joy. 

While we do these things that the spirit 
prompts us, our days shall be as our strength 
and we shall run and never be weary, we shall 
walk and shall not faint. That day is squan- 
dered that leaves us tired out, for the Spirit 
is no taskmaster and never abusec its servants. 
A happy life is a life of harmony and consists 
in doing the will of the Spirit, which is Love. 
Happiness is natural and right. Nothing but 



135 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

our lack of reason or our lack of love, can hurt 
our interior happiness. 

But if we would find this full happiness, we 
must not stop with mere mental recognition that 
love is all we need. In order entirely, unselfishly 
to love anyone, we must first forgive everyone, 
those who injure us, and those who treat us un- 
justly. We must do more than that; we must 
cease to wish that they should be punished as they 
deserve, and we must wish them well, even in the 
enjoyment of their ill-gotten gains. The thought 
that " the wicked " should suffer in this life or in 
another, is born of our desire that they may. This 
we must put away from us. It may well be that 
a lower evil nature gets the highest happiness of 
which it is capable in its wrongdoing, just as the 
cuckoo, devoid of affection for its young, does 
not in consequence suffer, but only loses the un- 
speakable joy of maternity, of which it could not 
even conceive. 

" In the soul of man there is a justice whose 
retributions are instant and entire. He who does 
a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does 
a mean deed is by the action itself contracted. 



LIFE, AND 136 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

He who puts off impurity thereby puts on purity. 
If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, 
and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. 
Character is always known. Thefts never en- 
rich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak 
out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie 
— for example, the taint of vanity, any attempt 
to make a good impression, a favorable appear- 
ance — ^will instantly vitiate the eiFect. But 
speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are 
vouchers, and the very roots of the grass under- 
ground there do seem to stir and move to bear 
you witness. For all things proceed out of the 
same spirit, which is differently named love, jus- 
tice, temperance, in its different applications, just 
as the ocean receives different names on the sev- 
eral shores which it washes. In so far as he roves 
from these ends, a man bereaves himself of 
power, of auxiliaries. His being shrinks . . . 
he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until ab- 
solute badness is absolute death." — {From Emer- 
son^s address to the graduating class at Divinity 
College,) 

When we accept the order of Nature showing 



137 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

forth infinite kindness, and so free our hearts 
of all bitterness — when we do this, the real sweet- 
ness of life begins for us. 

Only from such universal affection can spring 
up genuine love for certain persons, one's own 
relatives or strangers. Such love alone solves the 
apparent contradictions of the animal existence 
to the reasonable existence. 

Any love which has not for its foundation 
the renunciation of separate interests, and, as a 
consequence, aifection for everyone, is merely the 
animal life, and is subject to the same misery 
and to even greater miseries, and to still greater 
folly, than is life without this fictitious love. The 
feeling of passion, called love, does not remove 
the conflict of existence, does not free an indi- 
vidual from the craze for enjoyments, and does 
not save from death; but on the contrary, it 
merely darkens life still more, embitters the 
strife, increases the thirst for our own direct 
pleasures, and for the enjoyment obtained 
through the pleasure of those to whom we are 
close, and increases the terror of death for our- 
selves or for others dear to us. 



LIFE, AND 138 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

The man who seeks his Kfe in the happiness of 
his animal person, who increases during his whole 
Hf e, the means of animal happiness, by acquiring 
wealth and hoarding it, will make others contrib- 
ute to his animal happiness, and will distribute 
that happiness among those individuals who are 
most useful to him for the welfare of his own 
person. But how is he to give up his separate 
life, when that life is supported not by himself, 
but by other persons? And still more difficult 
will it be for him to decide to which of the per- 
sons whom he prefers, he should give the benefits 
which he has acquired. 

" Starbuck seems to put his finger on the root 
of the matter when he says that to exercise the 
personal will is still to live in the region where the 
imperfect self is the thing most emphasized. 
Where, on the contrary, the subconscious forces 
take the lead, it is more probably the better self 
in posse which directs the operation. Instead of 
being clumsily and vaguely aimed at from with- 
out, it is then itself the organizing center. What 
then must the person do? * He must relax,' says 
Dr. Starbuck, — ' that is, he must fall back on the 



139 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

larger Power that makes for righteousness, which 
has been welling up in his own being, and let it 
finish in its own way the work it has begun. 
. , . The act of yielding, in this point of 
view, is giving one's self over to the new life, 
making it the center of a new personality, and 
living, from within, the truth of it which had be- 
fore been viewed objectively."* 

Before he shall be in a condition to love, that is, 
to live well regardless of his separate self, man 
must cease to hate, that is, to do evil ; and he must 
cease to prefer, for the sake of the happiness of 
his own person, the interests of some persons to 
others. 

The happiness of the life of a man who forgets 
his separate interests through love is as natural 
as is the well-being of a plant in the light. The 
covered plant cannot inquire, and would not in- 
quire, in what direction it is to grow, or whether 
the light is good, or whether it must not wait for 
some other and better light, but takes what light 
there is, and stretches towards it — so the man who 

* From " The Varieties of Religious Experiences " by Wm. 
James— pages 209-210. 



LIFE, AND 14,0 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

sees the insufficiency of individual happiness does 
not argue about how much he must give up of 
that of which he has deprived other people, and to 
what beloved beings he should give it; and 
whether there is not some better love than the one 
which makes the demand; but gives himself, his 
being, to the love which is accessible to him and 
which lies before him. Only such love gives full 
satisfaction to the reasoning nature of man. 

Dowden says, " But in truth, this reality 
(love), once experienced, makes the other reali- 
ties appear the shadows; it is an ardour as pas- 
sionate as any that is known to man. Its special 
note is a deliverance from self." 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE DOOR OF HAPPINESS 

" One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and 
repentance to help to bring them on the right path, and 
might thereupon conclude (as every one does conclude) 
that these affections are good things. Yet when we look 
at the matter closely, we shall find that not only are they 
not good, but on the contrary deleterious and evil passions. 
For it is manifest that we can always get along better by 
reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and 
remorse." — Spinoza. 

LOVE is only Love when it supplants the 
lower nature. Only when one gives not 
merely his time and his strength, but spends his 
body for others, gives his life for them — only 
this do we all acknowledge as love. True love is 
to give women and men what they need, not to 
use them for ourselves; and in such love alone 
do we all find happiness, the result of love. 

Exactly in this manner does every laborer for 
the good of others give his body for the nourish- 
ment of another, when he spends himself with 

141 



LIFE, AND 142 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

toil, and brings himself nearer to death. But 
such love is only possible to the man who knows 
no limit to the giving, either of himself or of 
those beings nearest and dearest to his " self." 

" ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.' 
This is the first and great commandment. And 
the second is like unto it : ' Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself.' " Thus, from the Old Tes- 
tament, quoted the lawyer. And Jesus replied, 
" Thou hast answered right, this do " — that is, 
love God and thy neighbor — and thou shalt live 
(Matthew xxii. 36-38, with Luke x. 27-8) . 

" We know that we have passed from death to 
life," says a disciple of Christ, " because we love 
the brethren" (1 John, iii. 14). True and real 
love is the life itself, for God is Love, and in 
loving we express Him. . 

Who among living people does not know that 
blissful sensation which is most frequently expe- 
rienced during early childhood, before the soul is 
choked up with the life which stifles the love in 
us? Who does not know that blessed feeling of 
emotion, even if but once experienced, during 



143 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

which one desires, not less of feeling, but to love 
everybody, both those near to him, his father and 
mother, his brothers, and wicked people, and his 
enemies, and the dogs and the cattle and the blade 
of grass? Children have this glorious, all-em- 
bracing fellowship with things living and not 
living.* This is the light which Walt Whitman 
came to show. When a man feels thus he desires 
one thing — that it should be well with everybody, 
that all should be happy, and, still more, he de- 
sires that he himself may act so that it may be 
well with all; and that he may give himself and 
his whole life to making others well and happy. 
And this, and this alone, is that love in which lies 
the Life of Man. 

This love manifests itself in the soul of man as 
a hardly perceptible tender shoot, in the midst of 
coarse shoots and weeds resembling it, which are 
the material desires of man, usually called love. 
It seems to men, and to the man himself, at first, 

* " Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven," for children are filled 
with reckless love, giving it freely and so pauring it out without 
stint or thought of consequence; living a spontaneous life they 
so far realize for themselves the kingdom within. 

They live, accepting what is as what must be, not in the future, 
but taking what comes from day to day. 



LIFE, AND 144, 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

that from this shoot must grow the tree of real 
love, " within whose secret depths the dove is 
sometimes felt to be " ; and it seems also that all 
the other shoots are of the same kind. 

At first men prefer the weeds which grow 
faster, and cultivate them, and the one shoot of 
life is stifled and languishes ; but what most fre- 
quently happens is even worse. Men have heard 
that among those shoots there is one which is gen- 
uine, life-giving, called Love, but not knowing 
which it is, they trample it down, and begin to 
rear another shoot from the weeds, calKng this 
love. 

Worse yet, men seize the shoot with rough 
hands, crying: " Here it is, we have found it, now 
we know it, let us train it, love ! love ! the most ele- 
vated sentiment, here it is ! " And they begin to 
transplant it, to correct it; and handle it; and, 
fighting for it, crush it until the shoot dies before 
it has flowered. Then they say: " All this is non- 
sense, folly, sentimentality." Love needs but one 
thing — ^that men should not hide it from the sun 
of righteousness, which is another name for jus- 
tice, and which alone will promote its growth. 



145 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

The animal stage is sweet and good within the 
limits of the animal stage, but the man who has 
awaked to the intellectual and spiritual life, un- 
derstands the visionary and delusive character of 
the merely animal existence. He recognizes that 
the setting free of the one true life within him 
alone confers happiness: yet he whose whole 
physical existence is a gradual annihilation of 
his person, and who cannot but become aware of 
this on the approach of that person to inevitable 
death, strives in every way to preserve that per- 
ishing existence, to gratify its desires, and thereby 
deprives himself of the possibility of the only 
happiness in life, which is love. 

The activity of those who do not understand 
life, is always directed to a conflict with others 
for their own existence, to the acquisition of their 
pleasures and enjoyments, and to their own de- 
liverance from suif ering, or to the putting off 
of inevitable death. 

But the increase of pleasures itself increases 
the strain of conflict and sensitiveness to suffer- 
ing, and brings death nearer. 

In order to hide from themselves the approach 



LIFE, AND 146 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

of death, such men know but one means — still 
further to increase pleasures. Then the pleasures 
reach the limits where they cannot be further in- 
creased; they pass into suffering, and terror of 
death, which approaches ever nearer and nearer. 

To those who do not understand life, the chief 
cause of this fear lies in the fact that what they 
regard as pleasures (all gratifications of a rich 
life), are of such a nature that they cannot be 
shared equally among all men ; they must, there- 
fore, be taken from others, must be obtained by 
force, by evil, by destroying the possibility of 
that kindly inclination toward p>eople which is the 
root of love. 

How can we love those upon whom we will- 
ingly trample, whom we keep in wretched- 
ness that we may have pleasure? That kind of 
pleasure is always directly opposed to love, and 
the more intense it is, the more it is opposed to 
love. So that the more intense the activity for 
the attainment of pleasure, the more impossible 
becomes the only happiness accessible to men, 
which is love. 

It seems as though the increase of happiness 



147 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

proceeded from the best external arrangement of 
one's existence, such as the luxury that money 
brings. But the best external arrangement de- 
pends upon greater violence to other men, which 
is directly opposed to love. 

It seems as though the existence of a poor la- 
borer or of a sickly man were evil, unhappy; and 
the existence of a rich and healthy man good and 
happy; and men bend all the strength of their 
minds to escaping a poor and sickly existence, 
and to obtaining for themselves a fine, rich, 
healthy one. They think that the advancement of 
mankind consists in devising and handing down 
better means to gain such a life; therefore men 
vie with one another in endeavoring to delay 
death, by maintaining, as well as possible, that 
pleasing life which they have inherited from their 
parents, or by organizing for themselves a new 
and still more pleasurable life. All of which is 
erroneous and futile. 

Whatever crust of prejudice, then, we have to 
break, however painful it may be, we must, each 
one of us, stamp into our own hearts this truth, 
that there is no good but love and no evil but self- 



LIFE, AND 148 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ish love. To these words alone opens the door 
of Happiness. 

Few have found that door. Most of us are in 
the state of the young seeker for truth who when 
she was asked, "Are you happy?" repUed, 
"Why, no, I don't suppose anybody can be 
happy in this world. Think of the little children 
dying and worse than dying, and of all the 
misery and sorrow about us ! How could one be 
happy here?" 

" Do you think men cannot be happy? " 

" I don't know. If they can, it must be after 
they have passed through this life." 

" Then you think this world is a place of pro- 
bation?" 

" Well, yes — or at least a school." 

" But does not a wise, good teacher make the 
school pleasant, and learning a delight? It is 
only when we transgress the laws of life and are 
unwilling to learn that we find the way hard." 

" How can we avoid transgressing laws, when 
we have no way of knowing what they are? " 

" Why, we may easily know. The laws of life 
are revealed to us through the senses, by personal 



149 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

experience, by partly inherited race-experience, 
by reason, and most of all, by our desires and 
tastes." 

" Are desires and tastes to serve as guides? " 

" Certainly. You have heard of Professor 
Fisher's experiments in dieting Yale boys:* he has 
shown that a healthy appetite selects the proper 
food for the body. We must trust our appetites, 
bodily, mental and spiritual, allowing each part 
of our nature naturally to modify or check the 
rest." 

" But we have to struggle to do what is right 
or at least what is best, don't we? " 

" I think not. The strenuous life does very 
well for those on whom it is not a strain, but as 
our teachers of athletics are learning now, strain 
has to be paid for. The " second wind " is na- 
ture's silence when her protest of weariness is dis- 
regarded, and it is followed by exhaustion. And 
this is as true of the mental and spiritual life as 
of the physical. If we exhaust ourselves in striv- 
ing to gratify all our desires and to have a good 
time, we cannot be happy. If, seeing the miseries 
of life, we disregard them or do nothing about 



LIFE, AND 150 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

them, we shall not be happy. This is recognized 
in the grim proverb of the Talmud: " The door 
that will not open to the needy, shall open to the 
physician." That is not a matter of vengeance 
or even of punishment : it is a simple natural law. 
When' we see distress, our impulse is to relieve it, 
and if we allow calculation or selfish desires to 
check that impulse we shall suffer for it. That 
is one way to quench the Spirit, which is the mov- 
ing soul of ourselves." 

"Do you think there are many happy per- 
sons? " 

Dr. C. Brodie Patterson was once asked if he 
thought most persons were happy. * No,' he said, 
* if they were happy they would be well.' Most 
of us think that it is. the other way, that if they 
were well they would be happy, although our ob- 
servation shows that those who are physically 
well are not always the happiest, and that even 
the most abundant animal spirits have their cor- 
responding periods of depression." 

" Well, have we any right to look for happi- 
ness? Should we not rather endure our experi- 
ences doing the best we can? " 



151 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

" If there is Iqve and order in the world we are 
certainly entitled to happiness. There is a better 
way of meeting the hardships of life than endur- 
ance, a word which comes from durus, — ^hard, 
hardening ourselves against them. What cannot 
be helped must be accepted, — ^not endured, — joy- 
fully accepted as a necessary part of life, not re- 
sisted and resented. 

" Obedience to the divine leadings of such na- 
ture as we have, will give us the experience that 
we need, whether it be sweet or bitter : that expe- 
rience will recur just as often as we need it in 
order to learn the lesson. We shall make mis- 
takes and shall suffer for them, but suffering is 
grievous only when it is unwillingly borne. By 
willingly taking it we find the way to that peace 
of God on Earth that passeth understanding. 
That is life's real happiness and it is within the 
reach of all. We have but to take it." 



CHAPTER XV 

INTERIOR AND ECONOMIC PEACE 

The best repentance is to up and act for righteous- 
ness, and forget that you ever had relations with sin. — 
William James, " The Varieties of Religious Experience^" 
page 127. 

WHAT is the common history of those who 
give up Metaphysical Science? They 
feel the new thought, are lifted up by it and ap- 
propriate all they can of it to themselves. They 
fail to share it with those about them and — they 
lose it. The faculty which they neglect fades out. 

Some scientists have acquired psychic power in 
a greater or less degree. For what? Merely to 
relieve themselves of anxieties and pains? If so, 
that is pure selfishness. If that be the only ob- 
ject, they will surely lose the power. Yes; be- 
cause they have enlarged their perceptions, they 
suffer more than they could have suffered before. 

For what is this power given? To teach it to 
others? 

It will take long to instruct the immeasurable 
masses of mankind. The poverty and ignorance 

152 



153 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

of the millions make it almost hopeless to teach 
even a tithe of them. Charles Booth writes of the 
" Submerged Tenth " ; — it should be the sub- 
merged nine-tenths, overwhelmed with the com- 
mon anxiety of how to get a living; subject to 
the degrading terror of losing their positions, 
they are unable to conceive of unity — to them all 
is separateness. When the conception of inter- 
dependence first comes to them, when the thought 
that no one can live to himself becomes real, they 
are bowed down with the knowledge that if they 
keep their positions, it is only at the cost of keep- 
ing someone else out of a position. And although 
even this degree of enlightenment is better than 
no recognition of oneness, yet when it goes no 
further, it creates an atmosphere of fear coming 
from the masses, against which metaphysicians 
strive in vain. There is nothing in the purely 
mental stage, any more than in the purely animal 
stage, that can bring true happiness or peace. It 
is still " a striving and a striving, and an ending 
in nothing." 

For what is the power — ^to educate the leaders? 

That is only to fix them still more firmly upon 



LIFE, AND 154 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

the backs of the people; and however they may 
desire it, they cannot change the conditions of in- 
justice till the people desire the change. Desire 
is the mother of action, and until it quickens 
either the individual or the mass, no change can 
take place. For after all people have in this 
world just about what they need, whether it be in 
economic conditions or in spiritual development. 
If it were possible to impose perfect social condi- 
tions upon the masses before they had seen the 
beauty of righteousness, the effect would be most 
disastrous. As Stephen Maybell says : 

"A political Utopia would be a physical 
Heaven concealing a spiritual hell — a monstros- 
ity. Society cannot be made to show forth the 
fruits of justice, which are righteousness and 
peace, while the desire of justice is not in the 
people." 

For what is the power? To do good in the 
world, to make men more successful in their un- 
dertakings? 

Suppose that I am in the dry goods business 
and attain a thorough poise, adopt the best meth- 
ods and make no mistakes. I shall sell more 



155 LIFE, AND 

LO\rE, AND PEACE 

goods and get more money, but no more goods 
will be sold on account of that. I shall merely 
sell some goods which somebody else would other- 
wise have sold. Even if I sell them at less ex- 
pense and therefore cheaper, I do it to the injury 
of others, who will lose that trade, that is to say, 
will lose their living : for competition has reduced 
the profits of business for the ordinary run of 
merchants to mere wages of superintendence. 
And this is the natural result of the separate 
idea of life. So long as men believe that their 
existence is separate from that of others, just so 
long will they strive one against another, and 
thus reduce even those profits of any business 
(unless it be a monopoly) from which they de- 
rive the means to gratify their physical desires. 
If I farm successfully, no more produce will 
be eaten than if I had failed, and just as many 
hundreds of thousands will still go hungry; for 
the people have only a certain amount to spend 
on vegetables and fruit, and I cannot increase 
that amount, I can only sell the amount that the 
market can take, which someone else would have 
grown, had it not been for me. 



LIFE, AND 156 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Without spiritual development, men cannot 
see that the silver and gold, the cattle on a thou- 
sand hills, and all the fruits of the earth are for 
all men. The Universal Mind has provided for 
the wants of man's animal nature, but man, in his 
lack of love, has sealed his own senses and neither 
sees nor understands. 

Is the power in order to heal diseases? 

But that will save lives and thereby increase 
the efficiency of the workers, and we have such 
overpopulation already that we cry for laws re- 
stricting immigration; and we have such "over- 
production " now that we have to consolidate and 
to form trusts to stop it. 

The blindness of separate life is nowhere more 
fully shown than in this idea that men want more 
than they should have, and that the way to deal 
with that condition is to give them still less than 
they are now getting. So contrary is this to 
man's inner nature that, after establishing condi- 
tions which prevent his fellows from obtaining 
what they need by their own efforts, he takes 
from his own gains to give to them a dole of 
charity. This state of affairs could not be, if 



157 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

men realized that the animal life is not all of life, 
nor is it even a separate part of life. 

Is the power to be used to enlighten men? 
Why ? That they may attain happiness ? 

But the more men see, the more they will un- 
derstand that economic conditions force them to 
live more or less at the expense of their fellows. 
Existence is tolerable now, only because we do 
not know all the misery of which we are part 
cause. The wisest of men mourned that he saw; 
he said, "So I returned and considered all the 
oppressions that are done under the sun : and be- 
hold the tears of such as were oppressed and they 
had no comforter; and on the side of their op- 
pressors there was power; but they had no com- 
forter. This also is vanity and vexation of 
spirit." 

Besides, nothing enlightens the ordinary man 
so much as the pain he suffers from his own folly, 
and nothing shows him so well that all men are 
his brothers as to find that he suffers for their 
errors as well as his own. 

If a man came to me with the gout do you 
think I would heal him? Not at alll I would 



LIFE, AND 158 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

show him that he ate too much and worked too 
little, and that as long as he lived that way, he 
ought to have the gout! Why should we help 
him to break into the kingdom of heaven physi- 
cally, when he is unwilling to enter in by the gate? 

So also of society. While we live upon our fel- 
lows, we ought to suffer. Not only the rich who 
are on top, but the poor also, because to quote 
again, " the poor are guilty of the sins of the 
rich; the poor are the many and the rich are the 
few, and the many make the conditions of which 
the rich are a part." 

Even the discontented among the masses do 
not see this ; they resent the imposition of others. 
If men once saw that there were no " others," 
but all was unity, they would throw off the yoke 
they have fashioned for themselves, and thus set 
themselves and their brothers free. 

We may humanize men, we may heal them; 
but they will, not the less, live upon the bodies of 
one another; for they cannot help it any more 
than you and I can help it now. 

In the best of times there are large numbers 
of men and women unemployed or only partly 



159 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

employed, for there is not enough employment 
for everj^one, and* those who are employed do not 
get the full product of their toil. Such are the 
conditions we have created and which we main- 
tain by injustice and separateness. 

So that if we work, we work at the cost of 
keeping someone else idle, or of taking part of 
the reward of his labor from someone. If every- 
one did get the full reward of his labor, where 
would rent of land eome from? For land rent is 
a part of the product that is taken away for per- 
mission to work at all; and everyone of us must 
either pay rent to another or collect it for our- 
selves. 

This is not the divine intention, and we must 
find out what the divine intention is, seeking out 
the eternal law, by which we have moral and eco- 
nomic hfe: for we cannot help men by trying 
merely to nourish our own growth. 

There are three stages of moral growth, to 
which and by which we can help mankind econom- 
ically; first, to understand that the kingdom of 
heaven can be attained upon earth ; then to desire 
to get there; after that comes the knowledge of 



LIFE, AND 160 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

the way to the kingdom, in which we will find our 
peace. For peace can never be perfect or per- 
manent until it is merged and broadened into the 
peace of God, that is the peace of the kingdom 
upon earth. 

If then we are to realize peace in ourselves, we 
must study the economic side of the universe as 
well as the spiritual ; we must exhibit a system of 
society which will make peace about us possible, 
and, accordingly, we must destroy by the divinely 
appointed means the monopolies with which all 
men, wilHngly or unwillingly, throttle one 
another. 

And the fruitful mother of monopolies is mo- 
nopoly of land, because it withholds from all the 
one thing absolutely necessary for* the life of all. 
When man is divorced from the source of suste- 
nance for his physical life, he becomes just so far 
the slave of him who controls this source, leaving 
him powerless to protect himself. It strengthens 
the feeling of separaten^ss both in the slave and 
in his owner, and makes impossible the recogni- 
tion of kinship. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE VOICE OF TRUTH 

THERE is no death," says the voice of 
Truth. " I am the Resurrection and the 
Life; he that beheveth in me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live. And everyone that liveth 
and believeth in me shall never die." 

" There is no death," say all the great teachers 
of the world; and millions of men who understand 
life say the same, and bear witness to it with their 
lives. And every living man whenever his soul 
sees clearly, feels the same truth in his heart. 
But men who do not understand life, cannot do 
otherwise than fear death. They see it and be- 
lieve in it. 

" How is there no death? " cry these people in 
wrath and indignation. "This is sophistry! 
Death is before us ; it has mowed down millions, 
and it will mow us down as well. And you may 
say, as much as you please, that it does not exist, 
it will remain all the same. Yonder it is." 

161 



LIFE, AND 162 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

I shall die. What is there terrible about that? 
How many changes have taken place, and are 
now in progress, in my fleshly existence, and I 
have not feared them? Why should I fear this 
change which has not yet come, and in which 
there is nothing repulsive to my reason and expe- 
rience? It is so comprehensible, so familiar, and 
so natural for me, that during the whole of my 
life I formed fancies in which the death, both of 
lower animals and of persons, has been accepted 
by me, as a necessary and often an agreeable 
condition of life. What is there terrible about it? 

For there are but two strictly logical ways of 
looking at life : one the false view— that by which 
life is understood as these seeming changes which 
take place in my body from my birth to my death ; 
the other the true view — ^that by which life is un- 
derstood as the Unseen Consciousness which is 
within myself. Both views are logical, and men 
may hold either one or the other : but in neither, 
held by itself, is the fear of death consistent. 

The view which understands life as the visible 
changes in the body from birth to death, is as old 
as the world itself. 






1631 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Although we think we have just discovered 
this view by our materialistic philosophy, we have 
only carried it so far that it seems absurd. It 
finds expression among the Chinese and among 
the Greeks. And among the Hebrews, the 
thought appears in the Book of Job, the oldest 
of all their books: "Dust thou art and to dust 
thou shalt return." This view as held at present, 
may be thus expressed : " Life is a chance play of 
forces in matter, showing itself in space and 
time. Consciousness is the spark that flashes up 
from matter under certain conditions. All this 
is the product of matter, infinitely varied; and 
what is called life is only a certain condition of 
dead matter." 

This view is utterly false. It confuses fife with 
its direct opposite, dead matter. From such a 
conclusion death should not be terrible, but Ufa 
ought to be terrible, as something unnatural and 
senseless, as indeed it appears to the Buddhist 
religionaries, and to the new pessimists, like 
Schopenhauer and Hartmann. 

The other view of life is as follows: Life is 
only that which I recognize in myself, when I 



LIFE, AND 164, 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

meditate upon it. I always feel my life, not as I 
have been, or as I shall be, but I feel my life thus 
— that I am, that I never began anywhere, that I 
shall never end anywhere. And according to this 
view, death does not exist. 

Neither as an animal only, nor as a rational 
being only, can a man fear death ; the animal has 
no consciousness of life and does not see death; 
and the rational being, having a consciousness of 
life, cannot see in death anything except a nat- 
ural and never-ending change of matter. But if 
man fears, what he fears is not death which he 
does not know, but the severing of that part of 
hf e which he does know — that is, his animal ex- 
istence with its chances. That feeling which is 
expressed in men by the fear of death, is only 
the consciousness of the inward contradiction of 
life; just as the fear of ghosts is merely the feel- 
ing of a deluded mind. 

There is a merely physical shrinking from 
death, due to the inheritance of a desire to avoid 
it. Like the impulse to reproduction, this has 
strengthened itself out of proportion to other de- 
sires, because those men or beasts in which this 



165 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

desire was strongest were incited to the greatest 
exertions to avoid death. Succeeding in a meas- 
ure, they left offspring endowed with the same 
race-feelings. 

Those on the other hand, which had little repul- 
sion to death, earlier surrendered to attack, and 
so earlier ceased to multiply offspring. Even the 
offspring which they did leave, more readily sur- 
rendered in the struggle for existence, thereby 
cutting off that branch of the family. We 
needed that fear to keep the undeveloped race 
alive under hardships; some of us need it still. 
But, such a momentary, physical shrinking is not 
what tortures men, making them think of " a 
grim spectre," " a destroyer," and so on. 

Superstitious fear of death is not fear of death 
at all, but fear of a life after the throes of death, 
which life is imagined to be unreasonable and in- 
consistent with the nature of Man and of the 
Universe, as we have made this present life 
to be. 

" I shall cease to be, I shall die, all that in which 
I set my life will die," says one voice to a man. 

" I am," says another voice, " and I cannot die. 



LIFE, AND 166 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

and I ought not to die. I ought not to die, and I 
am dying." Like horses and other animals we 
fear that which we do not clearly see. 

Not in death, but in this contradiction, lies the 
cause of the terror that seizes upon a man at the 
thought of death of the flesh : such fear of death 
lies not in the fact that man dreads the loss of his 
animal existence, but in the fact that it seems to 
him that he will die who should not and must 
not die. 

Men are not terrified by the thought of the 
death of the flesh because they are afraid that 
the life will end with it, but because the death of 
the flesh plainly shows them the necessity of a 
true life, which they do not possess. In such 
persons the fear of death always proceeds from 
their fear of losing their special self, which, they 
feel, constitutes their life. They think, " I shall 
die, my body will molder, and destroy my self." 
Men prize this self of theirs ; and, assuming that 
this self is the same as their fleshly life, they 
conclude that they must be annihilated with their 
fleshly life. 

But my self is only that which has lived in my 



167 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

body for a number of years. Neither my body, 
nor the length of its existence, in any way deter- 
mines the life of my self. If I, every moment 
of my life, ask myself (in my own mind), 
"What am I?" I reply: " Something thinking 
and feeling," that is, bearing itself to the world 
in its own peculiar fashion. 

But this self which thinks and feels, had its 
origin, and began to take its character, thousands 
of years ago in my ancestors, and in that from 
which they sprung. It is continuous; it began 
before my body was formed, and cannot then be 
a mere part of the body, which will end with it 
or change with it. " I never was not, nor shall 
1 hereafter cease to be." (Bhagavad Gita.) 

Our body is not one, and the mind which sup- 
poses this changing body to be ours, and to be 
always the same, is not itself continuous, but is 
merely a series of states of consciousness. We 
have already, many times, lost both body and con- 
sciousness. We lose our body constantly ; at least 
once in every seven years every particle of it 
changes entirely, and we lose our consciousness 
every time that we fall asleep. Every day and 



LIFE, AND 168 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

hour we feel in ourselves the alteration of this 
consciousness and the re-estabhshment of it — 
which is one of our sources of joy — and we do not 
fear the changes in the least.* 

Hence, if there is any such thing as our self 
which we are afraid of losing at death, then that 
self cannot reside in the body which we call 
ours. 

What is this something which binds in one all 
the states of consciousness which proceed in it, 
and which succeed each other hour by hour, but 
that fundamental Self? What is this on which, 
as on a sentient cord, are strung one after the 
other, the various consciousnesses which follow 
each other, day by day? This is our real self. 
It is that which says, " I love this and I don't 
love that." 

Every being is different. If I know a dog, a 
horse, and a cow, and have any intelligent rela- 
tions with them, my friendly attitude to them is 
not based on their external marks, but on that 
peculiar relation to the world in which each one 

*A theosophist once said that she fell asleep every night 
thinking what a good time she was going to have, and awoke every 
morning feeling how much she had enjoyed the night. 



l6g LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

of them stands, or^ the fact that each one of them, 
in his degree, hkes and dishkes, loves and does 
not love. 

This peculiar property of men, of loving one 
thing in a greater or less degree, and not loving 
another, is usually called character. For char- 
acter is the sum of our abilities, and the chief of 
these is the ability to love and to express that 
love. 

The idea that life consists neither of the per- 
ceptions of body only, nor of those of mind only, 
nor of the perception of body and mind com- 
bined, is becoming familiar to us, through the 
teaching of " Mental Scientists " as well as 
through the new interest in the doctrines of Bud- 
dha and in theosophy. Neither mental nor Chris- 
tian Science, nor theosophy claims to be new, but 
only to be the distinct enunciation of great and 
world-old truths. Consequently, their teachers 
refer to the oldest sacred books for statements of 
the transcendent nature of man. 

We fix our eyes upon a small, insignificant bit 
of this life, do not wish to see all of it, and trem- 
ble lest this tiny fragment which is dear to us 



LIFE, AND tl70 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

should be lost. The imaginary danger to an ex- 
istence, we totally misunderstand, becomes a real 
terror. This recalls the story of the madman who 
imagined that he was made of glass, and who, 
when he was thrown down, said, " Smash! " and 
immediately died. 

One who has entered into the knowledge of the 
nature of the Spirit knows that this love of his 
to some, and dislike to others, which has been 
brought into his existence by himself, is the very 
essence of himself; that this is not an accident, 
but that this alone has the essential of life, and he 
recognizes his life only in this essential growth 
of love. 

He remembers that his relation to the world 
has changed, that his submission to the law of 
reason has increased. He remembers that his love 
has grown constantly stronger and broader, giv- 
ing him more and more happiness, quite inde- 
pendent of his attitude as a separate person, and, 
sometimes, directly contrary to it, and even in- 
creasing in proportion to the decrease of the sense 
of separate personal existence. 

Such a man, having received his life from a 



171 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

past that is invisiye to him, perceives its constant 
and unbroken growth, and transfers it not only 
eahnly but joyfully to the unseen future. 

My friend, my brother, has lived precisely like 
myself, and he has now ceased to live as I live. 
His life has been his consciousness, and it has 
been passed in a bodily existence. My brother 
has been, I have had relations with him, but now 
" he is not," and I do not know the place, if there 
is any place, where he is. 

" Nothing has been left behind "—thus would 
speak a chrysalis, a cocoon, which had not yet re- 
leased the butterfly, on seeing that a cocoon lying 
beside it had been left empty. But the cocoon 
might reasonably say this, if it could speak and 
think, because, on losing its neighbor it would, in 
reality, no longer feel it in any way. It is not 
thus with man. My brother has died ; his cocoon, 
it is true, has been left empty. I do not see him 
in the form in which I used to see him, but the 
fact that he has disappeared from my sight has 
not destroyed my relations with him. I retain, as 
the expression goes, " a remembrance " of him. 
Not only a remembrance of his hands, his face, 



LIFE, AND 172 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

his eyes, but also a remembrance of his spiritual 
form.* 

This recollection of my brother is something 
that acts on me, and acts precisely as my brother 
acted during his earthly existence. This remem- 
brance demands of me now, after his death, what 
it demanded of me during his lifetime. I cannot 
deny his life, because I am conscious of its power 
upon me. I may no longer see how he holds me, 
but I feel in all my being that he still holds me as 
before, and hence that he exists. 

As Henry George said at the funeral of his 
co-worker Croasdale: "But that which we in- 
stinctively feel as more than matter, and more 
than energy ; that which in thinking of our friend 
to-day we cherish as best and highest — that can- 
not be lost. If there be in the world order and 
purpose, that still lives." 

Jesus died a very long time ago. His exist- 
ence in the flesh was short. We have no clear 
idea of his person ; but the power of his wise and 

* The forms of crystals and of animals disappear; no remem- 
brance of them as far as we know, remains among crystals and 
little if any among the lower animals. But this is not true of 
man. 



173 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

loving life, his attitude toward the world, and 
nothing else, acts to the present day upon mil- 
lions, who take his mind to themselves, and Uve 
according to it. What is it that acts? What is 
it that was formerly bound up with the existence 
of Jesus in the flesh, and which continues and 
increases this same life of his? We say that it 
is not the life of Jesus but the results. And, 
having uttered these words, utterly without mean- 
ing, it seems to us that we said something clearer 
and more definite, than that this power is the 
living Jesus himself. 

Surely, this is exactly the way in which ants 
might talk, while clustered about an acorn which 
has grown up, and become an oak. The oak 
tears up the soil with its roots, drops branches, 
leaves, and fresh acorns ; it screens from the light 
and the rain, changes everything that formerly 
grew around it. " This is not the life of the 
acorn," say the ants, " but the results of its life, 
which came to an end when we dragged off the 
acorn, and buried it in the ground." 

Every man who fulfils the law of life, sub- 
mitting his animal being to reason, and to the 



LIFE, AND 174, 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

power of love, has lived, and after the disappear- 
ance of his bodily existence, will live through 
others with whom he is one. 

However contracted may have been the sphere 
of man's activity, whether he be Jesus or Socrates, 
a woman, a youth, an obscure old man, — ^if he 
lives by expressing in his personality Love for 
others and the desire for the happiness of others, 
he has already entered here, in this life, upon 
that new relation to the world which is the real 
business of mankind. Where this devotion is 
complete, it brings to him who gives himself, the 
peace which passeth understanding. 

In order to save themselves from fear of death, 
some men try to convince themselves that the 
animal existence is their rational existence, and 
that the continuance of the animal race of men 
satisfies the demand for immortality which all 
bear within them. But we can realize immor- 
tality only by comprehending that life is the 
eternal movement which seems but as a wave. 
" As the swallow darting in and out of thy halls," 
said the heathen philosopher, " such, O King, is 
the life of man." 



175 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

The great change in our position at the death 
of our body is terrible to us; but the same great 
change took place with us at our birth, and noth- 
ing bad came of it for us, but, on the contrary, 
so good a thing came of it that we do not wish 
to part with it at all. 

The visible life is a part of the endless move- 
ment of life. Our true life exists; we know it 
only; through it we know the animal life, and we 
know that this semblance of the true life is sub- 
ject to unchangeable laws; is not what happens 
in the invisible life itself also subject to laws, and 
to the results of these laws? 

But to complain because we cannot now under- 
stand much that happened before our present 
visible life, and that which will take place after 
our death, is the same as complaining because we 
cannot see what is beyond the limit of our eye- 
sight. Is not all the " mystery of life " like the 
mystery of the forest, ominous and dark, both 
in front of us and behind, but light enough for 
each one where he is? In truth, the "mystery 
of life " seems to consist in trying to see behind 
things up to which we have not yet come. 



LIFE, AND 175 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

"But," persists the troubled consciousness, 
" though I cease to fear death for myself, it takes 
my wife, my child, my friends; this loss I cannot 
but feel and I miss them sorely. That is a grief. 
How is it possible that I should not fear that? " 

The disaster of death, the nightmare feeling 
of helplessness, the empty, dull earth that is left, 
the changed world that we look at as we awake 
each day, or lie awake at night, the pity for our 
own loss, and the uselessness of what remains 
of our existence, may crush the strongest with the 
shock. 

Philosophy is like an impertinence, and re- 
ligious consolation seems a mockery, when we lay 
our dead away. For the moment there is no com- 
fort but our sorrow and the love of others. What 
wonder that we turn to those who promise us 
continued companionship with the spirits here. 

What can one do for this poverty-pinched girl? 
The one good and the one hope of her starved life 
was that when her lover and she could together 
save enough to make it seem right, they would 
be married. So she would escape the dreariness 
and misery of her surroundings. And now he 



177 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

IS dead ; one more, untimely killed by " the strain 
of modern life." To offer to comfort her is 
mockery : she will only tell you that you know no 
agony like this: but at least you can show her 
that though she has lost the nearer and closer 
love, the world is full of love like yours. 

Even for grief like that there is relief: not 
merely Buddha's bitter balm when he sent the 
mother to get black mustard seed from a house 
where death had never been. The mother car- 
ried her dead babe about the village and each one 
offered mustard seed, but each one said " death 
has been here." At last she realized that her 
grief was a part of the common sorrow. That is 
a help, but it must not stop at that. 

John Bright said: "I was in the depths of 
grief, I might almost say of despair, for the 
light and sunshine of my house had been ex- 
tinguished. All that was left on earth of my 
young wife, except the memory of a sainted life 
and of a brief happiness, was lying still and cold 
in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden called 
upon me as a friend, and addressed me, as you 
might suppose, with words of condolence. After 



LIFE, AND 178 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

a time he looked up and said: 'There are thou- 
sands of houses in England at this moment where 
wives, mothers and children are dying of hunger, 
hunger made by the laws. Now,' he said, ' when 
the first paroxysm of your grief is past, come 
with me, and we will never rest till those laws are 
repealed/ I accepted his invitation." 

In such unselfish devotion to a great cause 
is the sovereign specific for a bleeding heart. 
" Goodness," says Olive Schreiner, " is to take the 
common things of life and walk truly among 
them. Happiness is a great love and much 
serving. Hohness is an infinite compassion for 
others." 

Our grief is but a refined form of selfishness. 
The remembrance, the influence, in short, the 
" spirit " of our dear ones is still with us, and 
still moves our thoughts and desires. It is but 
our individual gratification that we miss and 
lament. 

" That may be so," replies the erring conscious- 
ness again, "but it is the gratification of our 
noblest part, the affection; such gratification 
feeds the very love of which you talk." 



179 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

"True," answeijs the higher reason, '*but in 
love for all and in devotion to them instead o£ 
in gratification from them, those affections will 
find a larger field. In that larger love is hap- 
piness instead of regret." 

The narrower our love the more pain we suffer 
from it; the largest love embraces, understands 
and forgives everything, and knows no disap- 
pointments and no end. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 

IF we admit that there is any plan or coherence 
in the Universe, the inexplicability of the suf- 
ferings of the earthly existence proves to man, 
more clearly than anything else could prove it, 
that his life is not a mere personality, which 
began at his birth and which ends at his death. 

Wolves rend a man who is alone in the forest ; 
or a man is drowned, frozen, or burned to death, 
or simply falls ill alone, and dies, and no one ever 
knows how he suffered. There are thousands of 
such cases. Of what use can this suffering be 
to any one? 

For the man who understands his life as an 
animal existence, there is not, and cannot be, any 
answer to this question, because, for such a man, 
the connection between suffering and error lies 
only in what is visible to him, and this connection 
is utterly lost to his mental sight in the sufferings 
which precede death. 

180 



181 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

To such a man, suffering is torture ; but, in the 
natural order, suffering is only a sensation which 
calls forth activity ; the activity in turn banishes 
this painful sensation and calls forth a state of 
pleasure. 

As long as we think only of material well- 
being, suffering seems to us mysterious; but its 
use may be either to teach us necessary prudence 
or to point out to us our neglect of nature's laws, 
or else to keep alive sympathy with others who 
are still in the primary class. 

But we rebel at it, and think we are entitled to 
peace. What is the desire for mere peace? A 
diseased nerve pains us because we have violated 
nature. The pain annoys us, so we press hard 
on the nerve and dull the pain. Then we have 
peace. Or, we deaden it by opiates : again peace. 
Pressure and opiates become our mode of life to 
get away from pain, the result of our own ac- 
tion. We deaden Nature's voice that would fain 
show us the cause. 

So with self-sacrifice. We have become de- 
generates spiritually, through living an unnatural 
life, through not following our natural instincts 



LIFE, AND 182 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

and desires. There arises a conflict between our 
natural instincts and our unnatural instincts. 
Result — spiritual restlessness and unhappiness. 

To get away from this awful, restless self, 
we sacrifice self. Self-sacrifice is the pressure 
on the spiritual nerve that aches. The denial of 
self is the opiate, the hypnotic that deadens the 
vital nerves of self ; and then — ^peace. But at 
what a price ! 

In the depths of our own souls, we know that 
suff*ering is indispensable to the happiness of 
our lives, and we go on living, foreseeing it, or 
submitting to it. Nevertheless, we rebel against 
suffering, because with the false view of life, 
which demands happiness for our personality 
only, interference with this happiness appears 
as something unnatural, and therefore disturbing. 

Pain in the brute and in the child is very well 
defined, and slight in intensity, never attaining 
to that anguish which it reaches in beings who 
have attained to rational consciousness. In the 
case of the child, we see that it sometimes cries as 
piteously from the sting of a wasp as from an 
injury which destroys the vital organs. 



1S3 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

And the pain of a being which does not reason, 
leaves no trace in the memory. Let anyone en- 
deavor to recall his childish sufferings, and he 
will see that he is really incapable of reconstruct- 
ing them in his imagination. So with natural- 
minded persons, and with a woman who does not 
refuse the suffering of child-bearing. " She re- 
membereth no more her travail, for joy that a 
man child is born into the world." 

Sensation, therefore, is that which moves life, 
and hence it is what should be. Nor could we 
have pleasure without its corresponding pain, any 
more than we could have light without shadow, or 
feel heat without having felt cold. As we be- 
come more highly developed, we are more sensi- 
tive to pleasure and pain. The discord which is 
unperceived by one man is unpleasant to another, 
and is agony to a third. The last man is the one 
who appreciates harmony. As Browning says: 
" The capacity for suffering is the mark of rank 
in the order of life " — ^rather the capacity for 
sensation — physical, mental and spiritual. Then 
for what does man enquire, when he asks: " why 
and to what end is suffering? " 



LIFE, AND 134 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

The beasts do not ask this. When the perch, 
in consequence of hunger, torments the minnow, 
when the spider tortures the fly, or the wolf de- 
vours the sheep, each is doing what must be, and 
accomphshing the thing that must be fulfilled. 
Therefore, when the perch, the spider, and the 
wolf fall into like torments from those stronger 
than they, they resist, and wrench themselves 
away and flee, but they accept what they are do- 
ing as part of that which must be done. In them 
there cannot be the slightest question that what 
is happening to them is precisely that which must 
happen in the course of Nature. 

The depression and horror of death, which 
seems to affect animals at the shambles, may be 
due to their unnatural subjection to the power of 
pitiless intelligence. Such fear Caliban might 
reasonably have of Setebos. 

This must be so until the higher law of love is 
established. It may be, that as man reflects this 
higher law, animals and all nature will fall under 
it, and peace will be established, not the peace of 
the desert, but the peace of full, harmonious life. 

I perceive in my errors in the past, and in the 



185 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

errors of other people, the cause of my suffering, 
and if my efforts are not directed to the cause 
of the suffering — to the errors — and if I do not 
try to free myself from them, I neglect that 
which should be done. Therefore, suffering 
presents itself to me in a way in which it should 
not, and in fact, as well as in imagination, it 
grows to frightful proportions, which exclude 
all possibility of normal Hf e. 

Says Sir Oliver Lodge in the Scientist's Cat- 
echism: " How comes it that evil exists? " 

"Answer. Acts and thoughts are evil when 
they are below the normal standard attained by 
humanity. The possibility of evil is a necessary 
consequence of a rise in the scale of moral exist- 
ence; just as a creature whose normal tempera- 
ture is far above zero is liable to damaging or 
deadly cold." 

But cold is not in itself a positive or created 
thing. As we become used to cold and learn to 
take precautions in regard to it, it ceases to be 
an evil or even a cause of suffering. 

The cause of suffering to the animal is the 
violation of the laws of animal life; to the mind. 



LIFE, AND 186 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

it is the violation of the laws of intellectual life. 
This violation makes itself known by pain, and 
the disturbance consequent on the violation of 
the law is directed to the removal of the cause of 
the pain. The cause of suffering to the spiritual 
consciousness is also found in a violation of law, 
and makes itself known by " sin," and the dis- 
turbance consequent on the violation of the law 
is directed to the removal of the cause of the 
error — the ** sin." As the suffering of the ani- 
mal calls forth activity directed towards remov- 
ing its pain, and as this activity deprives the pain 
of its torture, so the sufferings of a rational 
being call forth activity directed to remove error, 
and this activity, itself frees suffering from its 
horrors. 

The impression made on us by the sight of the 
suffering of children, of women in travail, and 
of animals, is our suffering more than theirs. 

Before the rational consciousness has been 
awakened, pain serves as protection to the per- 
son, and is not acute. Not to mention the 
martyrs, not to mention the troops who sang in 
the fire at the stake, like Huss, simple men, 



Ig7 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

merely out of a desire to exhibit courage, endure 
without a cry or a quiver, what are considered the 
most torturing of operations. There are limits 
to pain, for the extreme of pain ends in a dead- 
ening of it, in fainting, and even in an ecstasy. 
The anguish of pain is really frightful for 
those who think their life Ues in the existence of 
the flesh. Yet, if we had been born without the 
feeling of pain, we would very soon have begun 
to beg for it. Were women who violate the laws 
of health, living unnatural lives, without work, 
freed from pains of childbirth, they would bring 
forth children carelessly, often under conditions 
where hardly any would survive, and they would 
not have known love, because they would have 
had Kttle opportunity for its exercise. Were 
we free from the pains that follow want of cau- 
tion or excesses, children and young people would 
spoil their bodies, and grown people would know 
neither the errors of those who had lived before 
them, nor, what is most important of all, their 
own errors. In this life they would have had 
no rational object of existence, for they would 
not know what they must do: were there no 



LIFE, AND 188 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

growing old they could never be reconciled to the 
idea of impending death in the flesh. 

Were there no pain, man would have no indi- 
cation when he transgressed the laws of nature. 
If rational consciousness suffered no pain, man 
would not know the law, that is to say, would 
not know the Truth. 

" But," some retort, *^ you are talking about 
your personal sufferings, how can you reject the 
sufferings of others ? The sight of these suffer- 
ings constitute the most acute suffering." This 
they say, not in full sincerity. 

For sympathy is really a healthful emotion. 
If, in consequence of it, we do nothing, we create 
a morbid state of our minds, such as is common 
among women who read many novels. If how- 
ever, we bend every energy and exert every power 
to relieve the suffering which appeals to us, sym- 
pathy with it ceases to be a pain. We feel even 
a pleasure in our activity, and in its partial suc- 
cess in relieving the suffering, and yet more in 
remedying the evil which causes it. Above all, 
we find that it calls forth in ourselves, even if not 
in others, the feeling of Love. 



189 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Activity directed to the immediate, loving serv- 
ice of the suffering, and to the diminution of 
error, which is the general cause of suffering, is 
the only joyful labor that lies before man, and 
gives him that happiness in which life con- 
sists." 

No claim of novelty is made for this teaching. 
It is that of Christianity — the Christianity of the 
Sermon on the Mount, especially as set forth by 
Tolstoy, as distinguished from that of the Coun- 
cil of Nicea. It virtually says to us : " Renounce 
your self-seeking ends; love all men, all crea- 
tures, and devote your life to them. You will 
then be conscious of possessing the joy of the 
Spirit, and true life, which is eternal, and to you 
there will be no death." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

CONCLUSION 

THE life of man is a striving after happiness, 
and that for which he strives, is given to 
enUghtened man. 

When we recognize that there is nothing 
worth having or worth giving but love, we be- 
come loving — all love, and being so, can fear- 
lessly follow our own desires, knowing that they 
are prompted by love. So love becomes the sole 
law to us. We do what we choose, and so 
enter into the glorious liberty of the children 
of God. We are no longer under the law of the 
animal life ; we have learned the Truth and the 
Truth has brought us freedom. The more we 
express love, the more satisfaction we find, and 
the more love we draw toward us, and the more 
service others bring toward u$. This is "at- 
tracting happiness." 

We have been taught and have painfully 
learned that we must struggle for all the good 
we attain. It is not true. The best and highest 

190 



191 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

comes to us like the growth of a tree, because it 
is natural and easy, when once we have learned 
the Law of Love. 

Evil, in the form of death and suffering, is 
visible to man only when he takes the laws of his 
corporeal, animal existence for the law of his 
three-sided life. Only when he, being a man, 
re-descends to the level of the beast, does he even 
see death and suffering. 

Happiness is to be found in the service of our 
fellow-creatures, through which we come to be 
one with the mind of the Universe. It does not 
depend upon our seeing any success in this serv-^ 
ice. The effort to remove the cause of the suf- 
ferings of others and especially to enable them 
to think rightly, so that they may themselves 
avoid evil, is, in itself, a joy. 

Death and suffering are only crimes committed 
by man against the law of life in himself or in 
others. For a man who lives according to this 
law, there is no death and no suffering. 

Oh, death, where is thy sting? 
Oh, grave, where is thy victory ? 



APPENDIX I 



[APPENDIX I 

TOLSTOY ON "LIFE" 

T\yT OST men, Tolstoy says, lead only an ani- 
-^^ ^ mal life, and among these are always 
some who try to teach the meaning of life, with- 
out understanding it themselves. These teachers 
are of two classes. The first, composed of scien- 
tific men, he calls " Scribes." These declare 
that man's life is nothing but his existence be- 
tween birth and death, and that life proceeds 
from mechanical forces — ^that is, from forces 
which we style mechanical for the express pur- 
pose of distinguishing them from life. It is 
only in the infancy of a science, when it is as yet 
vague and indefinite, that it thus pretends to ac- 
count for all phenomena of life. Astronomy 
made the attempt when it was known as astrol- 
ogy; chemistry made it under the name of 
alchemy; and to-day biology, while occupied with 
one aspect of life, or with several, claims to em- 

195 



LIFE, AND 196 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

brace the whole. The other class of false doc- 
tors Tolstoy calls the " Pharisees." They pro- 
fess verbally the tenets of the founders of the 
religions in which they have been educated, but 
do not comprehend their real meaning and con- 
sequently content themselves with insisting on 
creeds and ceremonies. 

The wars of the Scribes and Pharisees, of false 
science and false religion, have so obscured the 
definitions of life laid down ages ago by the 
great thinkers of mankind, that the Scribes are 
quite ignorant that the dogmas of the Pharisees 
have any reasonable foundation at all; and, 
strange to say, the fact that the doctrines of the 
great masters of old have so impressed men by 
their sublimity that they have usually attributed 
to them a supernatural origin, is enough to make 
the Scribes reject them. The speculations of 
Aristotle, Bacon and Comte have appealed to 
only a small number of students ; they have never 
been able to gain a hold on the masses, and have 
thus avoided the exaggerations produced by 
superstition: and this clear mark of their insig- 
nificance is admitted as evidence of their truth. 
As for the teachings of the Brahmins, of Bud- 



197 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

dha, of Zoroaster, of Lao-Tse, of Confucius, of 
Isaiah, and also of Christ, they are taxed with 
superstition and error, simply because they have 
completely transformed the lives of millions of 
men. 

Turning from the futile strife of Scribes and 
Pharisees, we should begin our researches with 
that which alone we know with certainty, and that 
is the " I " within us. 

Man's body changes; his states of conscious- 
ness change; what then is the " I? " Any child 
can answer when he says, " I like this ; I don't 
like that." The " I " is that which likes— which 
loves. It is the relationship of a man's being 
with the world, that relation which he brings with 
him from beyond time and space. 

Life is what I feel in myself, and this life 
science cannot define. Nay, it is my idea of life 
which determines what I am to consider as 
science; and I learn all outside of myself solely 
through knowledge of my own mind and body. 
We know, from within, that man lives only for 
happiness, and his aspiration toward happiness, 
and the pursuit of it constitute his life. At first 
he knows the life in himself alone, and hence he 



LIFE, AND 198 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

imagines that the good which he seeks must be 
his own individual good. His own life seems the 
real life, while he regards the life of others as a 
mere phantom. He soon finds that other men 
take the same view of the world, and that the 
life in which he shares is composed of a vast num- 
ber of individuals, each bent on securing its own 
welfare, and consequently thwarting and de- 
stroying others. He sees that for him to contend 
in such a struggle is almost hopeless, for all man- 
kind is against him. If he does by chance suc- 
ceed in carrying out his plans for happiness, he 
does not even then enjoy the prize he anticipated. 
The older he grows, the rarer become the pleas- 
ures; satiety, trouble, and suffering increase; and 
before him lie old age, infirmity, and death. He 
wUl go down to the grave, but the world will 
continue to live. 

The good of the individual is an imposture, 
and if it could be obtained it would cease at 
death. The life of man as an individual seeking 
his own good, in the midst of an infinite host of 
like individuals engaged in bringing one another 
to naught, and being themselves annihilated in 



199 L,IFB, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

the end, is an evil and an absurdity. It cannot 
be the true life. 

Our quandary arises from looking upon this 
animal life as the real life. The real life is the 
life outside ourselves; and our own life, which 
originally appeared to us the one thing of im- 
portance, is after all a deception. Our real life 
begins with the waking of our consciousness to 
perceive that life, lived for self, cannot produce 
happiness. We feel that there must be some 
other good. We make an effort to find it, but, 
failing, we fall back into our old ways. These 
are the first throes of the birth of the veritable 
human life. 

This new life appears only when man re- 
nounces the welfare of his animal person as his 
aim. By so doing he fulfills the law of reason, 
the law which we all feel within, the same univer- 
sal law which governs the nutrition and reproduc- 
tion of beast and plant. Our real life is our 
willing submission to this law, and not, as false 
science would have us hold, the involuntary sub- 
jection of our bodies to the laws of physical ex- 
istence. Self-renunciation is as natural to man 



LIFE, AND 200 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

as it is natural for birds to use wings instead of 
feet; it is not a meritorious or heroic act; it is 
simply necessary to genuine human life. This 
new human life exhibits itself in our animal ex- 
istence, just as animal life does in matter. Mat- 
ter is the instrument of animal life, not an 
obstacle to it ; and so our animal life is the instru- 
ment of our higher human life and should con- 
form to its requirements. Life, then, is the 
activity of the animal man in submission to the 
law of reason. Reason shows man that happiness 
cannot be obtained by a selfish life, and leaves 
open for him only one outlet, which is love. Love 
is the only legitimate manifestation of life. It 
has an activity which has for its object the good 
of others. When it makes its appearance, the 
meaningless strife of the animal life ceases. 

Real love is not the preference of certain per- 
sons whose presence gives one pleasure. This, 
which is ordinarily called love, is only a wild 
stalk on which true love may be grafted, and 
true love does not become possible until man has 
given up the pursuit of his own welfare. Then 
at last all the juices of life come to nourish the 



201 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

noble graft, while the trunk of the old tree, the 
animal man, pours into it its entire vigor. Love 
is the preference which we accord to other beings 
over ourselves. It is not a burst of passion, ob- 
scuring the reason; on the contrary, no other 
state of the soul is so rational and luminous, so 
calm and joyous; it is the natural condition of 
children and of the wise. 

Active love is attainable only for him who 
does not seek his happiness in his individual life 
and who also gives free play to his feeling of 
good-will toward others. His well-being de- 
pends upon love as that of a plant depends on 
light. He does not ask what he should do, but 
he gives himself up to that love which is within 
his reach. He, who in this way loves, alone 
possesses life. Such self-renunciation lifts him 
from animal existence above the limitations of 
time and space, which are incompatible with the 
idea of real hfe. To attain to real life, man 
must trust himself to his wings. 

It is said that in his extreme old age, St. John 
the apostle had the habit of repeating continu- 
ally the words, ** Brethren, love one another." 



LIFE, AND 202 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

His animal life was nearly gone, absorbed in a 
new being, for which the flesh was already too 
narrow. For the man who measures his life by 
the growth of his universal love, the disappear- 
ance of the limitations of time and space at 
death is only the mark of a higher degree of 
Ught. 

My brother, who is dead, acts upon me now 
more strongly than he did in life; he penetrates 
my being, and lifts me up toward him. How 
can I say that he is dead? Men who have re- 
nounced their individual happiness never doubt 
their immortality. 

Christ knew that he would continue to live 
after his death, because he had already entered 
into the true life which cannot cease. He lived 
even then in the rays of that other center of life 
toward which he was advancing, and he saw them 
reflected on those who stood around him. And 
this every man beholds who renounces his own 
good; he passes in this Hfe into a new relation 
with the world, for which relation there is no 
death; on one side he sees the new light, on the 
other he sees refracted through himself its action 



20S LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

on his fellows; and this experience gives him an 
immovable faith m the immortality and eternal 
growth of life. 

Faith in immortality cannot be received from 
another; you cannot convince yourself of it by 
argument. To have this faith you must feel im- 
mortality; you must establish with the world in 
the present Ufe the new relation of love, which 
the world is no longer wide enough to contain. 

The foregoing sketch gives a glimpse of 
Count Tolstoy's philosophy of life, sufficient to 
show his idea of the failure of ordinary life, of 
the necessity, in the course of nature, of a loving- 
self-renunciation, and of the resulting growth 
in love and the realization of immortahty on 
earth. 

Count Tolstoy's door to the mysteries is simply 
active love for mankind. According to him, 
pre-occupation in working for the happiness of 
others has a reflex action in the depth of our 
being, which makes us feel eternal Ufe. It is 
this intensely practical side of his mysticism 
which preserves its equilibrium. Other mystics 
have made much of love, but it has almost al- 



LIFE, AND 204 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ways been an internal love of the Deity discour- 
aging action and giving free scope to a diseased 
imagination. 

We are asked to test the theory in our own ex- 
perience, and this it is possible for each of us 
to do, for love is to a certain extent at every one's 
command. Ruysbroeck, the German mystic, 
says: "Everything depends on will. A man 
must will right, strongly. Will to have humility 
and love, and they are thine " ( Vaughan, vol. I., 
p. 32). This is entirely consistent with the 
teaching of Christ, for he says, "A new com- 
mandment give I unto you, that ye love one 

another." 

Ernest Howaed Ceosby. 



APPENDIX II 

THE CONTROL OF CHILDREN 

WE have always with us that larger part of 
the race ready to accept the teachings of 
love, and to carry them out in their own lives — 
the children, who are always beholding the face 
of our Father which is in Heaven. Of such as 
these is the Kingdom of Heaven, not because 
they are better than we, except in so far as they 
have not yet learned to restrain their love nor to 
suppress the expression of it. They are ready to 
pour out their natural undeveloped love upon 
anyone who will receive it: in a most beautiful 
sense they are the free lovers. 

In teaching, and especially in controlling them, 
we may see for ourselves and show to them the 
Law of Love in action. This has not been our 
way in the past. It is only lately that we have 
learned that the best way of governing our wives 
is not " with a stick not thicker than our thumbs," 
and we have not yet learned that similar methods 
are not the best for children. We think that when 

205 



LIFE, AND 206 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

a man strikes his wife, he is probably drunk, but 
that when he strikes his child he is probably doing 
his " duty." We have such an ugly concept of 
that word that we naturally employ ugly methods 
of performing it. 

We think that we have abolished slavery in 
these United States, and it is true that we have 
abolished the chattel slavery of the black man; 
but with a large part of our population we still 
have a very grievous form of slavery. 

What is the essence of slavery? Is it not first 
that the slave is not allowed to own and to keep 
property of his own ; that his earnings are confis- 
cated by the master who has authority over him ; 
and second, that instant and unreasoning obedi- 
ence is required? Now is not that exactly the con- 
dition of almost all of our children? Do not we 
assume that whatever belongs to them, or what- 
ever they earn, belongs to us? — and must be ad- 
ministered by us in the way we think wise ? Even 
the five dollars that Grandpa gives the children 
at Christmas time is put in the bank for them, 
which they do not want done, to spend in the fu- 
ture for something they do not want. When 



20r LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

they talk, they are told to keep quiet; when they 
play, to stop that noise ; and they are expected to 
obey at once. Sometimes they are reproved, and 
often punished, if they even ask why they are 
to stop. And if they do not obey they are pun- 
ished with stripes or confinement. Are not these 
the essentials of slavery? And how many of us 
are there that do not punish our children? The 
little ones who can neither resist nor understand 
are beaten; because you and I seem to have an 
idea that they are full of sin and that we must 
purify them. We presume that we can make the 
innocent children good by beating them. 

Most of the oppression that is done under the 
sun comes from the idea that it is our duty or our 
privilege to make somebody else good. 

Children are usually governed mainly for the 
good of their elders and not for their own. 
" There is no instance in history," says Buckle, 
" where a class possessing power has not used it 
for its own benefit," and the attitude of adults 
toward children is daily a fresh confirmation of 
the statement. This selfish plan of education 
evolved the iniquitous maxim that "Children 



LIFE, AND 208 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

should be seen and not heard." Children have as 
good a right to be heard as we have. It is natural 
that they should make a noise, and much more 
necessary than that we should make music. If we 
do not want to hear them, we might go elsewhere ; 
but it is easier to check them, and thus fault-find- 
ing becomes a habit. "Mary," said a mother, 
" go see what Johnny is doing, and tell him to 
stop." 

Who gave us the right to tell the child to stop? 
If he is doing right, he is entitled to go on doing 
it ; if he is doing wrong, he is equally entitled to 
suffer the consequences, or at least to know what 
the consequences are, not to have his little experi- 
ment nipped in the bud with " stop." Of course, 
we may ask him to stop, as I may ask a kindness 
of you: and if his activities result in an attack 
upon others, then we may stop him, in order to 
preserve equal freedom, the only proper function 
of any governor. 

Who gives us the right to say to a child, " Thou 
shalt not," or " Don't do that? " When we pro- 
hibit children, even by force of mind, from doing 
various acts, we teach them a bad lesson. We are 



209 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

prone to make mistakes and children are prone to 
do likewise, but prohibitions and penalties cannot 
make us different. If anybody finds an abuse, 
even if it is clear that it sprang from a prohibi- 
tion, the first thing proposed is, "Be it enacted, 
etc." The citizen of New York himself, in his 
ordinary daily walk and conversation is regulated 
by about 21,600 laws, not to speak of number- 
less local ordinances, yet he does not become 
perfect. 

We sometimes say that our children are in- 
debted to us for bringing them into the world, 
and for the care and affection we lavish upon 
them, and that they should therefore obey ! 

But a debt cannot be contracted without some 
consent on the part of the debtor, and we cannot 
claim credit for what we do at our own desire 
without the request or consent of another. 

As to the affection, we keep cats and dogs and 
care for them for our own pleasure, without ex- 
pecting any return ; surely a child is a much better 
pet than a cat. 

We may wisely advise children, not command 
them: but at the same time we must use defer- 



LIFE, AND 210 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ence in giving the advice, and when we remember 
what kind of advice we got from our parents, we 
shall be a little careful how we do it. We should 
not impose either our stronger arms or our 
stronger wills on our children: we must allow 
them to grow up in the free air and sunlight. It 
is surprising even to those who follow this plan, 
how early the child begins to assert its liberty and 
to reap the benefits of experience. We may 
point out where they seem to us wise or foolish ; 
the child early finds out for itself and learns by 
experience. "No consecrated absurdity," says 
Michelet, "could have stood its ground if the 
man had not silenced the objections of the 
child." 

The child is always trying to find out, and 
therefore asks endless and sometimes difficult 
questions, which are too often met with, " You 
will know when you are older," or even " Don't 
bother me." We use half of the child life to teach 
it not to ask questions, and the other half to teach 
it to ask questions. 

The question that the child could properly an- 
swer for itself should be left to it to answer: the 



211 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

question that puzzles us should be looked up, in 
company with the child if possible. But to try 
to cover our own ignorance by evasive answers is 
a fatal mistake and seldom deceives the child; it 
generally undermines that respect upon which we 
must depend for our influence with the child. 

Education may begin before the baby is able 
to talk or even understand words : in its little hab- 
its of cleanliness, in going to sleep without being 
rocked or carried up and down, and so on. 

We say, "Of course we must make the chil- 
dren mind. Of course we must control the chil- 
dren " ; and consequently, although it may not be 
right, although we may not be able to defend it 
on moral grounds, that we may force them to 
obey. Whenever a man is doing anything that 
he feels is wrong, he defends it either on the 
ground that it is his duty, or that it is commanded 
in the Bible. Now that is a wonderful book, the 
accumulated wisdom of the ages, but it is a book 
into which one can read almost anything one 
wants to read out of it. The part we rely upon 
as our authority for beating the children, just as 
our forefathers relied on the text about Ham as 



LIFE, AND 212 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

an excuse for slavery, is not, as is generally sup- 
posed, " Spare the rod and spoil the child," which 
is not in the Bible, but '' He that spareth the rod 
hateth his son." Solomon had an ample oppor- 
tunity for experience; 600 wives and 300 mis- 
tresses, and probably a family in proportion, and 
perhaps in educating them in a wholesale way he 
had not time to sit with each little one on his 
knee and explain to him the wisest thing to do; 
but shouted out rather, " I will thrash you all if 
you do that," and " You will be whipped if you 
do not do this." But the injunction of Paul is, 
" Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath." 

In the old " schools " where children were 
" got " up, the real ruler was an ebony one. If 
anyone left undone what he ought to have done, 
the ruler rapped his knuckles to teach him that 
the ways of transgressors are harder than their 
knuckles. 

There can be only* two reasons for whipping, 
one is that we are angry or nervous, and the other 
is that our fathers whipped us and their fathers 
whipped them, and so on back. Probably, if we 
are going to continue to lay commands upon 



213 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

others, these co^mmands will still have to be 
backed up by a strong right arm. 

Startling as it may seem to say it, we have no 
right to punish children at all. They may be 
doing wrong. If they do the wrong to us, we 
are entitled to resist it and prevent it, if we wish 
to do so, but not to take revenge for it by violence. 

If children do need violence, they will get 
plenty of it from their playfellows, where it does 
not make them feel that they are helpless victims, 
" Send your son to college," said Emerson, " the 
boys will educate him." The other boys are on the 
same plane as he is, and he will not resent the vio- 
lence which necessarily comes, and to which he 
can offer resistance. 

Those who are still mere animals can teach their 
children in the animal way. A cat or a bear cuffs 
its young when they make mistakes. 

A philosopher was teaching tricks to his dog, 
and when the little animal refused to do what was 
required he said, '' Stupid beast; bad dog." 

Then it occurred to him that he should have 
said, " Stupid man; bad teacher." For the dog 
had a certain amount of intelligence and certain 



LIFE, AND 214, 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

motives. If he could not make the animal under- 
stand what was wanted and so appeal to its mo- 
tives (fear, appetite, love of approbation, etc.), 
it was his own stupidity and his own incompe- 
tence. So it is with children. 

We have practically abolished the old-time 
horse-breaking. I have helped at horse-breaking 
in the West. You throw a rope around a horse's 
neck and tie it around a post and snub him up 
tight to it, and put into his mouth a cruel " Mexi- 
can bit " and then fasten the end of a rope to 
a fence post and give the animal a blow with a 
quirt whip to start him off; then jump on an- 
other horse and chase him until, wild with the pain 
of the bit and terrified by the thing trailing be- 
hind him, he is almost ready to fall; then you 
throw the rope around his neck again, and tie him 
to the post once more ; force a saddle on his back, 
cinch it up by main strength, and, armed with 
spurs, jump on his back and ride him until he 
actually does fall with exhaustion. Then the 
horse is broken ; broken in that you have made him 
understand that you are the stronger animal, and 
that if you can get on his back you can ride. 



215 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Instead of that, we now do what is called horse 
training. The little colt is taught to follow you 
around the yard. After a time he allows you to 
lean upon him; he becomes accustomed to the 
weight of an arm and after a while to a leg. It 
is not a long step to put a saddle on him, and after 
that, even in a month, the first thing you know 
the colt is permitting and even enjoying your rid- 
ing him. 

That is the difference between training and 
breaking ; and yet some people say it is necessary 
to break a child's will. You might as well break 
its back; the injury to the child would be less. 
But I suppose that if I were given sixty horses 
to break in a week, or sixty children, as in a 
school class, I would be reduced to the rough 
and ready methods of horse- and child-breaking. 

The great kindergartner is the mother. Froe- 
bel in fact, observed and formulated the methods 
of the mother and applied these in the class-room. 
The most ignorant and uneducated mother who 
plays with her children and loves them, is a more 
efficient teacher than the veiy best kindergart- 
ner. We shall learn eventually that we should 



LIFE, AND 216 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

not make our children obey; that our children 
should do what we wish only because they love 
us, or because what we wish is right; otherwise 
not. 

This plan of making the children obey by beat- 
ing is brutal at the best; we are a little ashamed 
of it ourselves. The mother doesn't do it; she 
says, " If you don't stop, I will tell your father 
and he will whip you." Father does the whip- 
ping because mother says so. That is the way 
we deputize our sins. You foreclose the mort- 
gage on the widow for me, and I will rob the 
orphan for you, and when the widow comes in 
distress to me I say, " I have put it entirely in 
the hands of my attorney," and when she goes to 
the attorney he says, " I carry out the instruc- 
tions of my client," and between us we let her 
fall to the ground. 

We can no more make the child good by force 
of our own or of our deputies than we can by 
force make the man prudent or moral. For 
thousands of years, the censors, like Comstock, 
Gerry, Bergh & Co., have been guarding, not 
their own morals (about which they are never 



217 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

uneasy), but somebody's else, from contagion. 
Suppression is not education nor can it develop 
strength of character. 

A woman who has been a bitter sufferer from 
her husband's drunkenness, says, " Shall I not 
prohibit the use of liquor to my boy? " Better 
to explain fully the evil consequences of the 
wrong use of spirits, and then when you have 
made it clear, if he insists, he must learn for him- 
self, with one besides to help him. This is all 
we have any right to do. The poor mother de- 
clares she never could run the risk — Shaving more 
faith in the power of her poor little prohibition 
than she has in Nature's help for the boy. Listen 
to us in church; how beautifully we prate about 
'Not a sparrow falleth," yet in the case of our 
children it has come to be looked upon as almost 
criminal carelessness to trust that great protect- 
ing love in even an unimportant detail. We 
shadow our children every minute with a more 
or less ignorant and uninterested servant. These 
we may depend upon to do always the right 
thing— Divine principle we may not — Oh, we of 
little faith I Or else we make for ourselves a 



LIFE, AND 218 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

dreadful burden of governing our children in- 
stead of the joy it should be; bringing them up 
" by hand " like poor little Pip. 

It is quite natural that our children should do 
very little thinking. How few of us ever really 
think ! Certain rules and conventions, some good 
and some bad, govern our conduct. They have 
been handed down from past generations, and 
although they have mostly lost their usefulness, 
and even their reason for existence, we still re- 
tain them. It is as if a full-grown man should 
try to make his swaddling clothes do in place of 
man's garments. 

" But are we not to save children from the 
consequences of their folly? " We have no more 
rights with them than we have with grown people. 
If we see a friend going out without his overcoat 
we may not put it on by force, even though the 
consequences of his imprudence might be pneu- 
monia ; but if we see him blindly walk in front of 
the express train we pull him violently out of 
danger, trusting to his sense to justify us in the 
assault. So we guard our children from irre- 
mediable harm. 



219 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

It may be that,necessity is supreme anywhere; 
if we see a grown person ignorantly or hastily 
running into serious danger, we do not stop to 
think of rights — we pull him out. 

But many of the fatal risks that we seek to 
avoid by forbidding, are created by that same 
forbidding. The children must not play with 
razors! But two children at least grew up with 
razors always on the bureau. As soon as they 
were old enough to reach them they were shown 
how razors would cut even a sheet of paper held 
edgewise and it was explained that to handle 
them was dangerous — those children, with the 
saving timidity of the young, did not even wish 
to touch them. 

You cannot always be there to protect the child. 
If you save it by force from its small pains, it 
will not know enough later to avoid the greater 
ones. If a child is taught that firearms are dan- 
gerous, it will not want to play with them, nor 
climb up to get the pistol that you prudently and 
stupidly put upon a shelf. 

You cannot forever be nurse or guardian to 
your child. You cannot forever work beside it, 



LIFE, AND 220 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

and make it do this thing and that thing or the 
other. Before long it will be away from you a 
good deal of the time; before long it will have 
to make its own decisions, and it has to put 
into effect that which it has learned from its 
experience. We must therefore let it get the ex- 
perience. For, after all, the nature of things is 
a school and the most of what we call education 
to-day seems to be a well-meant but mistaken 
attempt to take the child away from this natural 
school, and prevent it from getting experience — 
substituting our set of rules or others' rules for 
that independent education by the ordinary 
things of life that make up the real education 
of the child. 

To guide is one thing and to control is another. 
One teaches — the other deprives of the lesson. 
Perhaps there must be laws in the home as long 
as there must be laws in the state. We do not 
yet know how well we would get along without 
those laws, as we have never tried. Clarence 
Darrow's " Resist not Evil " tries to show how 
this would work out. The strongest law is pub- 
lic sentiment, without which other laws are 
futile. 



I 



221 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

We must use our minds, to decide what are the 
natural consequences of anything that is done, 
and then lovingly to leave the child to that inex- 
orable logic of events. Is it, child-like, unwilling 
to wash its hands? That is not wicked; but as 
Moses knew, it is a sanitary thing to wash the 
hands before eating, and the customs of civilized 
society require scrupulously clean hands at meals, 
so though the child does not have to wash them, 
it must not expect to be received at table with 
the others unless it does. 

People who live simply, like the farmers, un- 
derstand that when children are unwilling to 
assist in the family duties, they forfeit the right 
to the support and advantages of the family: so 
the country boy who does not want to do his 
chores, leaves home. Any child can understand 
that, and can see the reasonableness of it, when 
an errand is to be done. 

To be a member of a family or of a community 
involves responsibilities, the proper results of 
which are a part of the transaction, and the child, 
like the man, must be left to take the whole of 
his part. If he buys something and is then un- 



LIFE, AND 222 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

willing to pay for it, it is poor education for us 
to step in and pay the debt. Rather allow the 
consequence, in the form of the loss of the article 
or the stoppage of the allowance, or saving the 
cost of some indulgence, to fall where it ought 
to fall. Put the suffering where it belongs be- 
cause you love the sufferer. 

We must not be misled by the precepts of non- 
resistance. To submit to the whims or the pas- 
sions of a peevish child may often do it an injury. 

If we turn the other cheek to the smiter it is 
only as an expression of love: the kindest thing 
to him may be to hit him: it is easy to make a 
fetich of what was intended only as a sign of 
feeling. 

Resistance to the Roman autocracy in Jesus' 
day was even less hopeful than resistance to Rus- 
sian autocracy in our day and the only hope lay 
in passivity. The same enthusiasm, energy and 
devotion that is spent in terrorism, might possibly 
have been better spent in some other way without 
arousing the fears and consequent antagonism 
of the indifferent but influential Russian middle 
class. 



223 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

But the moving principle is the love. As the 
fable says : 

" My dog tried to bite me. I liked the dog, so 
I kicked him lovingly in the jaw. He under- 
stood that argument. 

" My grocer tried to cheat me. I liked the 
grocer. I did not kick him in the jaw, but I told 
him lovingly that I would not deal with him 
again. He understood that argument. 

" My baby tried to slap me. I liked the baby, 
but I did not kick her in the jaw or even cease 
to play with her. I kissed her lovingly on her 
cheek. She understood that argument." 

So we are not entitled to check the child at 
our whim, nor to assume that he will naturally 
do wrong "because his nature is depraved," 
that is, because what he does is not what we 
would do. 

To tell a child the truth — ^to love it unfailingly 
— to be willing that it should learn by its own ex- 
perience, are cures adapted to every case, — which 
is not true of the slipper cure. Of course if we 
are going to spank our children we can only cor- 
rect the most glaring faults, for if we whipped 



LIFE, AND 224 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

them for every little thing we would probably 
wear ourselves out or kill the child. 

It is not true that the child's nature is prone 
to evil. It is prone to good, just as the plant 
is prone to healthy growth. It is only the evil 
surroundings and the restraint that warps na- 
ture in the child and in the tree. Under the in- 
numerable restraints that we have imposed, we 
have nothing like peace and never have had: we 
might now try the other plan. 

Jesus did not think that unless compelled to do 
what the parent believes is right and best, the child 
would do the wrong thing. He said, "except 
ye become as little children ye can in no wise enter 
the Kingdom of Heaven." The child loves — 
until we impart to it our standard, viz., that it 
must prey upon its fellows and that it cannot 
afford to love. 

Says someone: "Children are generally un- 
truthful, greedy and passionate: it is very easy 
to see the evil in them." Yes, very easy; 
especially after we have put it there. 

A child is passionate and greedy because it has 
not yet learned self-restraint; and it is untruth- 



225 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ful because it has not yet learned the difference 
in kind, or in effect, between truth and untruth. 
It needs experience to distinguish between the 
impression of the mind and the impression of the 
senses, and we often judge our little brethren to 
be liars when they are only poets. 

Every imaginative child relates in sober faith 
lots of things that could not possibly be true. 
The late Rev, Dr. John Hall used to tell how 
when he was a little boy he came running in to 
his mother full of excitement. " Oh, Mamma," 
he cried, " the cow has got into the potato field 
and has grubbed up bushels and bushels of 
potatoes and they are lying all over the ground." 

He was a good little boy and his mother simply 
said, " Johnny, take that basket over there and 
bring it in full of those potatoes." 

After a long and careful search the child re- 
turned shamefaced to his mother, with just one 
little potato — and she, wise woman, said never a 
word. The boy and the man never forgot that 
lesson. 



APPENDIX III 

AN ATTEMPT AT PRACTICE 

THERE is a remarkable Association of Com- 
munists living at Ingleside, Illinois, known 
as the " Spirit Fruit Conmaunity," the " Fruit of 
the Spirit " being Love. They pubUsh a paper 
which takes no advertisements and for which they 
will accept no pay. Their views on marriage, 
like their practice, has been absurdly misstated 
by a sensational press. They have prospered 
since 1896 without any help except from their 
own associates, and have just completed with 
their own hands, a large concrete house on their 
farm, both men and women working alike: they 
never lock their doors and do not demand debts. 
The statement of their leader shows a new and 
extreme phase of non-resistance put into success- 
ful practice ; though it would seem that even par- 
tial withdrawal from the turmoil of the world is 
not the best way to help the world. Their doc- 
trine is substantially as follows: 



227 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

NON-RESISTANCE ALONE UNITES MANKIND 
* 

In the constitution of man there is a desire that 
some time he shall be at one with his fellow man. 

I do not say that this hope is in every man at 
present, but it is universal with those who are 
most highly developed. The cause of it is the 
instinct of self -protection. 

Man passes through all stages of unf oldment. 
Evolution is from one stage or plane to another. 
These stages are linked together; but they are 
only stages, because man does not come into pos- 
session of all his faculties at once. Man begins 
at the lowest stage of his nature. The elemental 
man knows but little of his own nature for he 
is not alive in it, but he gradually becomes con- 
scious of complete manhood and expresses it. 

Before a man reasons and arrives at con- 
clusions he knows nothing of thought: in the 
same way, as long as he senses no desire for united 
interests with another, he knows nothing of what 
we call love. 

After the man has become conscious of his 
reason, he sees that he can get more good by 
working in harmony with his fellows than by op- 



LIFE, AND 228 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

posing them. Therefore, he hopes the hatred 
which he sees between men will somehow be 
removed. 

There is, however, another, deeper cause of the 
longing for harmony, which cannot be demon- 
strated on a material basis. Yet it is the primary 
cause of all desire to be at peace with humanity. 

The nature of man is ONE as water is ONE. 
The tendency is always to unite. Men think 
from external appearance that only some persons 
and things belong to them, and that many are 
separate from them, but in his inner nature man 
is not divided and never was divided. It is this 
nature which longs for unity with itself wherever 
it may be: this is the real cause for the hope of 
perfection that we feel; it is also the assurance 
that it will be realized ; for if man's desire for the 
solidarity of the race were founded only on the 
selfish desire to better his o^n condition, it would 
defeat its own object, as all selfish desires of man 
defeat their own objects. Since there is a cause 
in the nature of man for the desire for unity with 
his fellows, there must be a cause for his opposi- 
tion to his fellowsr 



QQQ LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

In order to imvestigate man, take that part of 
man to which we are nearest. To examine the 
nature of the water of the Atlantic Ocean, a 
single drop will be sufficient. So let us study 
this great Man who covers the entire earth, by- 
looking at his nature as it acts in ourselves. Our 
desire is to find what there is in us that makes us 
quarrel or oppose one another. 

My thought is, that it is all caused by an ele- 
ment in our constitution called Self -Will, This 
will makes us seek to follow our desires regard- 
less of the result to others: it cannot dwell with 
another Will without division or dissension. 

From that stage where his physical appetite 
desired the flesh of his fellow-man there has been 
but one cause for one man's killing another. This 
cause is the Self -Will — the desire to have our own 
way. There are two wills and these two wills 
clash and since both cannot have their own 
way, one kills the other or forces the will of the 
other into subjection. Nations only fight and 
kill because they cannot agi-ee as to what they 
want. 

Did the one nation ask the will of the other and 



LIFE, AND 230 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

obey it, there would be no killing. Animals are 
killed for their carcasses, but man is killed be- 
cause he has a will which is supposed to be a 
menace to other wills that differ from him. 

All persecutions, all the torture inflicted during 
the dark ages, all the blood that was ever shed, 
was because of a will to do or to believe or to 
get others to believe that which other wills do not 
think right or best for their own interests. It 
was a will on both sides ; the one whose blood was 
shed set his will against the will of the ruling 
order. Had either been willing to allow others 
to have their will carried out, had they not each 
put forth a will, there had been no bloodshed or 
torture. 

Is it not right to have a will? Where would 
we have been if our ancestors had not asserted 
their wills? Should we sit down in resignation 
and be ^uled in a way which seems unjust to 
us and not resent it and try to overthrow the 
injustice? 

I am not saying that things as they have been, 
have not been right : I do not say what you even 
now shall do when you are opposed and your 



231 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

so-called "rights''' are interfered with. It is my 
opinion that you will resent it. I do not con- 
demn you for it: I am able simply to tell you 
this: you will never Uve in unity with one 
another until you cease to have a will as to what 
others do, or what you shall do when they will 
you to do a certain thing. 

I do not say that the race has been unified, 
nor do I say that it is ready even now to be 
unified and be at peace. But I say that when it 
finaUy is unified it will be NON-RESIST- 
ANCE or willessness that will do it. 

A PERSONAL SOLUTION 

For my part the problem is solved. I can 
have just as much peace with anyone as I enjoy 
having. Will, which in other persons opposes 
other wills, does not disturb me. I let every 
other person do as he pleases. If he desire any 
action on my part, it shall be done at his request. 
I have confidence in the unity of the human Life 
which dwells in all, that It knows Its own busi- 
ness and will carry out Its own law. 

The majority of people are in bondage to that 



LIFE, AND 232 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

which they think is right or just. To be loyal 
to this they do contrary to what others will, con- 
cerning them. This is a form of slavery which 
the free human being will be dehvered from. 

I shall seem egotistical to some by referring 
to my own experience so much, but I only know 
that which I experience, therefore I must refer 
to it. 

I can do what seems to me to be erroneous in 
action, and I will do it, rather than oppose the 
will of another. The Life which now dominates 
me is inclined to be non-resistant toward other 
human wills. If they have a will concerning a 
thing, I do not protest against it. " Yes," you 
say, "this is all right insofar as it does not in- 
trude on your right or the right of others." 

Your definition of individualism is that each 
one has a right to do what he desires so long as 
it does not impose on the rights of others. Who 
ever lived that did not believe and practice this? 

The most distinguished Police Commissioner 
we have had in the United States said once in 
conversation, " Liberty is in doing whatever the 
law permits." 



^1 



233 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

"Ah," said his Jewish interlocutor, "the 
people of Russia have that kind of liberty." 

The king says his rights are to direct his sub- 
jects and receive their obedience and service. 
You infringe on his " rights " when you do as 
you desire. The church says you can do as you 
choose so long as you do not infringe on the 
rights of others: you must not swear, for it sets 
a bad example; you must not work on Sunday 
for the same reason. You must not talk against 
its teachings or hold views contrary thereto, be- 
cause you have a bad influence over others. 

The State guards your morals by protecting 
others from your encroachment on their rights. 
You must not better your condition at the dis- 
advantage of your neighbor ; you must not carry 
out your desire to make love to young girls al- 
though they are willing, nor are you allowed to 
marry all the older ones who are willing to marry 
you. This the State says is not right: the State 
says so because people say so. 

If you are only to do that which intrudes on 
no " rights " that any other person claims, you 
will be without any great actions. 



LIFE, AND 234 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

So long as there are " Rights," which anyone 
claims — •" Rights of belief," " Rights of posses- 
sion," " Rights of action," just so long will there 
be contention among men : the will of man is the 
author of all supposed rights. Your Anarchism 
and Socialism, if they undertake to interpret 
where one man's rights end and the other man's 
begin, will bring the same results as any govern- 
ment, whether despotic or liberal. 

Has a big stone the right to outweigh a little 
stone which is placed on the other side of the 
balance? Has the magnet a right to attract and 
hold the piece of steel? It does it, and that is all 
there is to it: there is no need of laws or legisla- 
tion about it. You cannot add ta it or take any- 
thing away by making laws which you say shall 
rule the conduct of the stone or magnet. 

I need no will or claim no rights: only that 
which I can draw to me is mine. If I draw the 
anger of another man, then that is my right: if 
I can, by being what I am, make him desire to 
work with me, and go the way I am pleased to go, 
that is my right. It is the right of any man to 
be the monarch of the whole world and have them 



235 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

all serve him if he makes them want to serve him. 
There is no place where one man's right begins 
and another one's right ceases. You have a 
right to what you get and no more. 

Life has in it the power to do right in every 
action. This power to do right is inherent in 
Life itself, and not only will Life do the right 
thing, but it is impossible for it to do the wrong 
thing. 

The purpose of a contract is to force Life to 
do that which it might not care to do. All con- 
tracts which bind the actions of persons in the 
future are forms of slavery. We need no con- 
tract with Life that it make the grain grow that 
we plant in the ground : no contract is needed to 
cause water to seek its level. 

Contracts give evidence that we have no faith 
in Life and in man who is an expression of Life. 
The law of demand and supply make the con- 
tract useless: that which is demanded by Na- 
ture is supphed by Nature. Contracts are only 
necessary where Nature is not allowed to act. 

You have no more right to bind the life which 
shall be in you to-morrow by making a contract 



LIFE, AND 236 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

for it, than you have the right to make a contract 
for the life that shall be in you in ten years or 
fifty years, or to contract for the same Life 
which shall be in your children or your chil- 
dren's children. All Life is spontaneous and 
must be given the chance to act according to its 
environments which surround it at the time of 
action. 

When peace between man and man is realized 
contracts will have no place. 

You need no will to get all that is yours. You 
can get no action of Life toward you by willing it 
to come to you — ^what would you care for a love, 
or any of its many forms of expression, if you 
got it only because you had a "right" to it or 
forced it by your will. 

The Will never sets in motion any Construc- 
tive life. The Will destroys. The claims of 
rights snuif out the light and quench all the fires 
in the human heart which tend to unify two or 
more persons. You dislike to be in the presence 
of anyone who asserts these rights of his. 

This is the cause of the breaking of the mar- 
riage tie. Self -Will and Rights enter, and the 



237 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Love that united the two is gone. Wife, how 
do you feel when your husband asserts his right 
to your love or your service for him, as you used 
to love and serve him when he claimed no rights? 
How do you feel when he wills that you shall be 
his loyal wife and yield to his desires? Hus- 
band, how do you feel when your wife claims a 
right to all your smiles and caresses as she once 
received them when you were free from rights? 

Do you, both of you, wife and husband, in 
the presence of this element of human Will feel 
that there is a unit or that it is likely that there 
will be one? 

That which holds good with man and woman 
holds good with the race. Non-resistance be- 
tween man and wife will solve the problem and 
unify them. Each has the unqualified right to 
just so much of everything the other possesses 
as they at the time can draw. 

When man conquers this element called Will 
in himself and subdues it, he does not lose his will 
power and become a weak nothing pushed about 
by other wills — no, just the opposite; he has be- 
come the Master of Will and when Will comes 



LIFE, AND 238 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

into action and is set against him, it meets its 
master and loses its power and desire to dictate 
to him. 

Alexander the Great overcame all other men 
by force, then he sighed for new worlds to con- 
quer and ended by killing himself by over-in- 
dulgence. 

One there was who overcame the world, in 
that he subdued this personal Will that desires 
to rule and claim rights, and made it an obedient 
servant. Which one say you conquered the 
world and found PEACE? 

Inventions, laws, business creeds, war, col- 
leges and modern civilization, whether in the 
form of despotic, democratic or socialistic gov- 
ernment or rule of conduct between man and 
man, — these can never unite the race. You may 
get them to agree as to what God is or is not, 
they may all agree on the code of morals. All 
this will not take the enmity to his neighbor out 
of the heart of man. All these things over which 
man quarrels are simply the symptoms of the 
disease of hate. 

A high temperature is not the disease of 



239 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

typhoid fever; sore on the skin is not the dis- 
ease called smallpox, they are simply the results. 
They are symptoms: man's strife over territory, 
religion, traffic, truth, and even science is not 
the cause of strife. It is a symptom which shows 
he has strife in him. 

You may shift the expression of this internal 
disease entirely away from ownership of land or 
property, away from all religious questions, 
away from all business dealings and even away 
from any particular kind of government. If 
you could unite all people on all these things 
about which they have fought, you would not 
make peace or any part of it: the trouble does 
not arise in these external things. 

Two men engage in business as partners. 
They believe in the same religion; politically 
they see things alike ; they are at one in all things 
which make up the ordinary life. One meets a 
woman and falls in love, becomes engaged and 
marries her. The other one meets her after the 
wedding and he also falls in love and claims the 
same right to receive all the affection he can 
draw from her, just as did the first one. Num- 



LIFE, AND 240 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ber one hears of it, he gets his gun and is as 
deadly an enemy to his friend on all other sub- 
jects that made up their former Ufe, as ever one 
king was an enemy to another. What is the 
cause? Right! A Will to have things a cer 

tain way. 

Now suppose he had conquered his will and be- 
come at Peace with the Whole of Life in others as 
well as in himself. Suppose he knew that Life 
was a Unit and therefore It would not rob It- 
self or do wrong to Itself in any way. (None 
will ever discard their separate wills or claim of 
" rights " until they know that Life is a Unit, 
and this they cannot know until they are actuated 
consciously by this Life which is a Unit.) This 
man meets the woman and enjoys her affection. 
He receives it as a gift to him at the time. He 
sees no need to procure a contract to keep others 
away or to enforce his future rights. If there 
is love there to-morrow, well and good ; he knows 
it will come to him. If on the other hand, she 
has something for another, he knows he has no 
right to it, and will feel no resentment. 

Those who talk Freedom know not the first 



4 



241 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

principles of Freedom. Freedom does not mean 
for you to be allowed to do as you please or will 
to do it. Freedom means for you to be able to 
let others do as they will do and for you not to 
be torn by passions and desires which are at vari- 
ance with things as they are. 

No man is free until he is his own master in 
every respect. 

Man's discord with man does not consist in the 
things in which he differs as to the external ar- 
rangement of things, but in the fact that each 
one is a slave to his own will and claims a right 
at all to anything. 

The problem is solved when you conquer your 
own will and claim no right, except that which 
your very existence brings to you each moment. 

To cease to exert the Self-will over others 
and try to oppose their conduct or claim any 
right for yourself does not mean weakness, but 
strength; and when you have conquered your 
own will you are the Master of Will in others 
without conflict with them. 

Non-resistance will do it. Not the kind 
practiced in Russia which makes them refuse to 



LIFE, AND 242 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

pay tax or to go to war; that might better be 
called stubbornness. The Spirit of non-resist- 
ance is the thing that alone can make peace. This 
spirit is a part of the nature of man. He comes 
into it in time just as the girl comes into woman- 
hood or a boy into manhood. This Spirit brings 
the consciousness and the conviction that Life is 
a Unit ; that Life has a purpose ; that this some- 
thing that has come forth at the culmination of 
the physical creation has a purpose and is gov- 
erned by good laws; that it is not against itself. 
We are then possessed by a faith in it and a per- 
fect willingness that it should act as it would. 
We no longer want to force it or guide it right. 
We have become IT and IT has become us, and 
thus we feel that we need not plan for it or exe- 
cute the plans. If we see this life in expression 
in another one in whom it has not yet placed the 
non-resistant element or spirit, we see that it is 
reasonable that we should not contend with this 
expression. We are glad to let him have his way 
and learn his lessons, we did the same. Peace is 
ours. Non-resistance ushered it in for us. 

AT PEACE WITH ALL THE WORLD 



B 



APPENDIX IV 

A NEW MOVEMENT 

FAY MILLS, the revivalist of Los An- 
• geles, is forming a Fellowship Organiza- 
tion. Whether this becomes a great power or 
not, the attempt from another source to put 
Love into practical operation in the widest field 
is at least significant. Though we may not all 
agree on the details of the practical program, we 
can agree on the unifying principles which Mr. 
Mills states as follows: 

The Fellowship Revelation does not concern 
itself with questions of the making of the world 
nor with speculations as to the unpenetrated 
future. 

But it does claim to present a sane, scientific, 
comprehensive philosophy, a simple, practicable 
and satisfactory rule of life, an ennerving, in- 
spiring, all-embracing gospel and a program 
that would remove a large proportion, if not all, 
of our apparent social and individual ills and 

343 



244 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

cause the reign of reason, love and joy to prevail 
everywhere, for all people. 

It is a revelation in two senses. 

First, the rule of life came simultaneously to 
two waiting souls from that depth or height of 
the enlarged consciousness where the still, small 
voice speaks with its clear, unmistakable, im- 
perative mandate to the willing ear. 

This simple rule of trust and love has been 
tested by reason, by the heart and by personal 
and collective practice, and in no respect has been 
found wanting, and I now definitely and irenic- 
ally make the claim that the practice of this 
rule, together with the comprehension of the 
unity philosophy, will introduce any soul to a 
profound, stimulating, joy-bringing gospel and 
the perfect solution of all practical problems, 
whether of the individual or of any form of 
society. 

Surely this may well be accounted such a reve- 
lation as the human race most needs, and while 
the suggestions of this comprehensive rule will 
be more fully developed later in this essay and 
in other writings, I mention it now as the very 



LIFE, AND 245 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

heart of the grea^ revelation of this present hour. 
One may fail to adopt the entire program, but 
if he gives himself to live by this rule, he will 
be possessed by that great Spirit which will 
lead him into all truth and to a satisfactory 
life. 

Here, then, are the seven syllables of this 
great glad word to the human race: 

I. The Scientific Basis or Fellowship. 
For uncounted ages science and religion have 
been supposed to be at war, and never more 
strenuously than in the nineteenth century, when 
modern science was fully born. 

Because the first serious, unprejudiced, wide- 
spread investigation of the facts of the universe 
seemed to indicate the overturning of the He- 
brew cosmogony and cosmology, many devout 
people cried out in genuine alarm and feared 
the destruction of their faith, but when modern 
science had patiently completed a portion of her 
work by furnishing the world the first verified 
and classified set of facts concerning the pro- 
cesses observed in the making of the universe, 
then three great generalizations were found to 



£46 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

grow naturally from the reasonable inferences 
drawn from the new knowledge. 

The first generalization was that of The 
Reign of Law, Order, the Reliability of Na- 
ture. The world of a hundred years ago was a 
wonder- world, and Christian scholars regarded 
it as interesting and significant just in propor- 
tion as they could prove the violation, abroga- 
tion and transcendence of natural law. With 
the destruction of the idea of miracle, in the old 
sense of disregard for law, the foundations of 
the old faiths seemed to rock and the structure 
of religion to be about to fall. The world, in 
the light of science, has become a so much more 
wondrous world that enlightened men now see 
that the inviolability of law is the great corner- 
stone of a rational faith. What those of old 
discerned in the wisdom and character of the 
Spiritual Father, is now perceived to be charac- 
teristic of the laws of the Nature Mother, and we 
know the laws of Nature are reliable and fully 
to be trusted, never to be transcended except as 
we understand them better and discern the 
higher laws which are still beyond our com- 



LIFE, AND 247 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

prehension. This great fact of the reliabil- 
ity of Nature and the uniformity of law af- 
fords the basis for a perfect and illimitable 
trust. 

The second scientific generalization is Evolu- 
tion as the unvarying method of the cosmic pro- 
cess, and inferentially, growth, development, 
progress. For, while I am well aware that the 
scientific hypothesis of evolution does not con- 
cern itself with Purpose, but only with the pro- 
cesses of the making of the worlds, it is also true 
that it is packed full of tendency, and even 
Ha^ckel says that this tendency has uniformly 
manifested itself as mehoration. The merest 
tyro in science, as well as the most learned in- 
vestigator, testifies that the whole trend of the 
cosmic process has been toward the production 
of finer and more intelligent and intelligible 
forces and forms. 

This great fact of universal melioration af- 
fords a solid standing ground for a universal 
confidence. 

The third and most important of the scientific 
generaUzations is that of Unity of Substance. 



248 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

By this is meant that there exists but one under- 
lying substance, manifested now as force and 
now as matter. The ancient atom has been dis- 
solved by modern science, so that it is no longer 
regarded as an indivisible particle of matter, but 
as a form of force, " a vortex of motion," a point 
for the convergence and divergence of forces. 
Every form of matter may be translated into 
every other form of matter, every form of force 
into every other form of force, and it is at least a 
rational inference that every form of force and 
of matter are interchangeable. It is enough to 
say now that we have a right to draw inferences 
from this great scientific hypothesis that would 
make anything except the unselfish life irrational 
for intelligent and conscientious people. This 
is almost like an echo of the word of Paul: 
" And now abideth Faith, Hope and Love, these 
three, but the greatest of these is Love." 

II. The Fellowship Philosophy is not 
new. It is the heart of all the greatest philoso- 
phy, ancient and modern, oriental and occi- 
dental. It is the basis of all profound theology, 
and the theologians have called it The Unity and 



LIFE, AND 249 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Omnipresence of God. I prefer the simple 
Saxon phrase: "There is but One, and that 
One is Everywhere." 

What is meant by this is that this is a universe 
and not a diverse or a maniverse and that what 
appears to be separate and contradictory is so 
only in appearance and not in reality. 

One Purpose underlies and interpenetrates 
all existence. No man has ever known why God 
chose to create this universe, but it must have 
been that He cast Himself out, in a sort of di- 
vine drama or experiment, to the outermost 
limits of consciousness, with the inspiring result 
that in the remotest atom there are intelligence, 
wisdom and power that produce the expression 
of life from apparently inanimate matter, and 
of more and more intelligent forms of life, until 
" man stands on the heights of his life, in sight 
of a height that is higher." This process, which 
we call evolution, is the return of the atom to 
God, or the extension of consciousness in the 
growing creation, and this process which unifies 
all that exists or can exist in our world, is the 
working out of the One Purpose and Plan, by 



250 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

the One Power. This is what we mean by the 
Spiritual Constitution of the Universe, and in 
the light of this thought every person, animal, 
plant and mineral, every atom and all force, all 
events and circumstances and conditions and 
objects are more or less intelligent and conscious 
expressions of the One Purpose and the One 
Life. Man is thus led to count nothing human 
or non-human as foreign to him, and his inner 
eyes open to perceive Truth, Goodness and 
Beauty everywhere. 

We may not adequately predict the consum- 
mation of this cosmic scheme. Man needs a 
larger vision for this, but he cannot think sanely 
and practically and doubt this consummation, 
"beyond all that we can ask or think," 

" One God, one Law, one Element, 
And one far-off divine Event, 
Toward which the whole creation moves." 

III. The Fellowship Psychology. The 
Psychology is the natural inference from the 
Scientific Basis and the Philosophy. It is rooted 
in the fact of the Spiritual or Intelligent Con- 



LIFE, AND 251 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

stitution of the Universe and the " Infinitude of 
the Private Man." 

The apparent variation in objects is one of 
consciousness on the part of the object and of 
the observer. This variation is not accidental, 
but is a necessary part of the essential order and 
thoroughly educative. The history of physical, 
intellectual and moral progress is the story of 
the development of consciousness. The highest 
manifestation of consciousness known to man is 
in man himself. When, in the upward march 
of the ages, man is born, " organic evolution has 
made a thing which is now its master." Here is 
that which begins to know itself and its v/orld, 
here is that which reasons and discriminates and 
determines, "choice is born in him; here is he 
that chooses; here is the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the July Fourth of zoology and as- 
tronomy. He chooses, as the rest of creation 
does not." He begins to remould his world, 
nearer to his heart's desire. He re-creates his 
physical and material environment. He is learn- 
ing how to control and develop the functions 
of his body, by mental processes. He seems to 



25^ LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

be dissolving the veil that hides the mysteries 
of the universe. He is discovering the secret of 
individual well-being and development. He is 
mastering and using the accumulated mind of 
the past and learning how to so connect himself 
with the Universal Mind, the Over- Soul, as to 
advance toward the reading of all riddles, the 
solution of all problems, the removal of all 
obstacles and the translation of all resistance into 
higher terms, gradually demonstrating that 
" victory over things is the office of man." He 
sees a " Pattern in the Mount," for the organi- 
zation of a terrestrial society on the noblest spir- 
itual principles, and he gives himself to make 
this actual in every form of human endeavor 
and association. As he absolutely surrenders 
himself to the spiritual ideal and the universal 
attitude toward life, he can speak the language 
of the lesser orders of the cosmos and listen to 
their prayers with power to grant them, and up- 
lift the world. Thus the recognition of the 
Spiritual Constitution of the Universe and the 
Infinitude of the Private Man, gives us a scien- 
tific, complete and practical psychology. 



LIFE, AND 253 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

IV. The Fellowship Rule of Life is Ab- 
solute Trust as the fixed attitude of the mind 
and Perfect Love as the unvarying practice of 
the life. After all and before all, this is the 
fundamental word, the sine qua non of the Fel- 
lowship Revelation. We cannot say too fre- 
quently or emphatically that no adoption of any 
creed or dogma is essential to membership in 
The Fellowship. This is an association based on 
principle and conduct, rather than on some state- 
ment of belief. I believe that unity of practice 
of our great principles will lead to unity of 
thought on the eternal verities, but no formula- 
tion of any statement of faith or opinion shall 
ever be required for Fellowship membership. 
The statement of the purpose to endeavor to lead 
the trustful and unselfish life and encourage this 
in other individuals and in all forms of associa- 
tion, is the one authorized, essential Fellowship 
statement. But, as I have intimated, in my mind 
all these seven divisions are naturally united. 
The practice of this rule of life will naturally 
lead an intelligent soul to perceive and appro- 
priate the philosophy and psychology, to appre- 



254 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

hend and exult in the gospel and to carry out the 
social program just so far as he has the power. 
The converse is also true, and there is no way to 
apply the Unity Philosophy and the Spiritual 
Psychology except as they are expressed in 
trustful and unselfish living. 

When the question is asked, " What shall we 
trust?" the answer is sometimes given: "Trust 
everything ! " This is a true answer, but what 
is really meant is: Trust that Power by which 
we live and all that is, exists; learn to look be- 
neath the surface ; cultivate the art of seeing the 
Invisible, but above all, act as though Infinite 
Wisdom existed in every object and in all ex- 
perience, and this attitude and practice will jus- 
tify themselves in the satisfaction manifested in 
your life. 

Trust Nature! What we have come to call 
the scientific spirit is that of trustfulness toward 
nature. All true science must assume the essen- 
tial unity of natural processes. The spirit of the 
discoverer and inventor is also one of trust in the 
great facts and forces as yet imperfectly appre- 
hended. Beyond this, it is possible for any soul 



LIFE, AND 255 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

to learn by expepence that of which the poets 
speak when they refer to the " various language '* 
in which nature tells her great story to the ap- 
preciative soul of man. The one who thus gives 
himself to communicate with the Interior Spirit 
will not only be uplifted by his appreciation of 
the sublime and beautiful in objects ordinarily 
attractive to him, but also by the sublimity and 
beauty in objects and processes which otherwise 
would scarcely excite his interest, or might even 
appear so as to excite repulsion. Nature and 
man proceed from the same source, and acting 
as though this were true, initiates man into a new 
life and experience, the secrets of which cannot 
be told in ordinary words to inappreciative ears. 
Teust Men! Our fellow-men are the highest 
expression of nature, and there is no man living 
or who has ever lived or who can live upon the 
earth who may not become a revealer of God to 
the trustful soul of his companion. In saying 
that we ought to trust men, I do not mean that 
we ought to call men honest when they are dis- 
honest, pure when they are impure, kindly when 
they are cruel, or reliable when they are unre- 



256 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

liable. But I do mean that we ought to treat all 
men as though the essential man was divine, and 
regard all the indications of a lack of perfection 
as incompleteness, owing to the ignorance caused 
by lack of previous development. 

Unsuspected beauties of character will be dis- 
covered in those to whom we are naturally at- 
tracted; those to whom we are indifferent will 
become fascinating, and those from whom we 
might otherwise turn in disgust will show them- 
selves to be our own, when loved and trusted. 

" What lack of Paradise, 
If in angelic wise. 

Each unto each as to himself were dear. 
If we in souls descried. 
Whatever form might hide, 
Own brother and own sister everywhere ! " 

Our business world with all its network of 
suspicion, its practice of chicanery and its incar- 
nation of selfishness, is yet forced to recognize 
,the great law of mutual trustfulness. A finan- 
cier said to me that it would be impossible to run 
the business world for a single day without the 
practical recognition of the great law of human 



LIFE, AND 257 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

trustfulness. We have yet much to learn in this 
direction, but with all its shortcomings there is 
a thread more valuable than that of gold which 
runs through all the economic and financial sys- 
tem of the present day. There is no depart- 
ment of human life that so urgently demands 
the application of these great principles, as the 
realm of industry and commerce; and in all the 
sphere of practical endeavor, no man will render 
such important service in applying the Fellow- 
ship principles to our economic life. Meanwhile 
let every man in association with every other 
in practical matters endeavor to incarnate more 
fully the trustful and loving spirit; and this 
should apply not alone to the great economic 
system, but to all our personal deaUngs with 
individuals, of a business sort. 

Even in relation to our enemies, if we have 
any, this rule of life will work with ilhmitable 
power. I heard the other day of an individual 
who was persecuted for fourteen years with the 
utmost spite and bitterness by another, to whom 
he continually ministered with a loving spirit and 
practical effort in return, until at last the soul 



258 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

of the unreasonable man was melted and he 
became one of the best friends of the other. 
"When a man's ways please the Lord, he 
maketh even his enemies to be at peace with 
him." 

The question is frequently asked, How far 
should we go in trusting men in the practical 
affairs of life? The answer is : Go as far as you 
can; practice the Golden Rule, which does not 
say to do to another as he wishes you to do, but 
as you would have him do to you, which means 
with your larger enlightenment, if you have it. 
There are no conditions or circumstances of 
human association in which men can live with- 
out trust and love. When they shall Uve per- 
fectly according to these principles, the social 
problems of life will be solved. 

Trust Experience! By that I mean, trust 
the events, circumstances and conditions of life. 
There is some way in which every one of them is 
divinely appropriate to your present stage of 
development, and there is no way in which they 
will trouble you, if you accept them by this atti- 
tude and practice. The resistful and resentful 



LIFE, AND 259 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

attitude toward the hard conditions of life in- 
tensifies the necessity for their existence. It 
raises a cloud of dust about the disturbed soul 
and causes a film to grow over his eyes, so that he 
is prevented from seeing things as they really 
are. The only possible way for a man to under- 
stand his world and treat it rightly is to deify 
it. If he does this and without reservation wel- 
comes all that comes to him, all that happens or 
can possibly happen at any time, he will find 
that some of the conditions are not what they 
appear to his imperfect vision. He will find that 
some of them will be immediately removed or 
altered, and he will find that those v/hich are not 
changed can be borne in such a fashion as to de- 
velop his character, which, after all, is the only 
end and aim of life. No burden can be laid upon 
human shoulders which the spirit of trust and 
love will not fit them to bear. Let the man learn 
to endure, as seeing the invisible. " Belief and 
Love! A believing love will relieve us from a 
vast load of care." 

Trust your own Soul! Above all, this is the 
innermost secret of life. Discover who you are, 



260 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

that there is a deeper deep and a higher height 
in your consciousness than might be ordinarily 
suspected, and that you can so accustom your- 
self to thinking of yourself in the highest char- 
acter that you can draw upon great wells of 
inspiration for your daily need. I do not say. 
Trust your instincts, nor your impulses, but your 
intuitions, and test your intuitions by the appli- 
cation which you make of this rule of life in re- 
lation to all your relationships. 

This naturally introduces us to 

V. The Fellowship Gospel. This is a gen- 
uine gospel that may be tested by anyone who 
gives himself to the practice of the rule of life. 
This great glad tidings may be summed up in 
two words, It Works! The man who perceives 
the unity of life and who gives himself to live 
accordingly, by trust and love, will possess by his 
own right, riches of Knowledge, Wisdom, Char- 
acter, Serenity, Joy and Power, which will cause 
him to abide in peace and satisfaction. This is 
the individual gospel. 

The trustful soul gains knowledge by intui- 
tion. He sees the Reality. He discriminates be- 



LIFE, AND geij 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

tween that which is elusive and that which exists 
in fact. He knows the truth and the truth makes 
him free. 

The trustful and loving man will gain wisdom 
by direct inspiration. Knowledge sees facts and 
is an apprehension of truth. Wisdom is apphed 
knowledge. The opposite of knowledge is igno- 
rance and the opposite of wisdom is folly. Wis- 
dom is knowing what to do next and how to do 
it. Some wisdom comes to man by instinct, some 
he gains by personal experience, some may be 
developed by the logical faculty ; but the wisdom 
that is of the most value is that which comes in 
response to the consecration of a man's will to 
the highest ideals. The word of the ancient 
prophet, " Trust in the Lord with all thine heart 
and lean not unto thine own understanding. In 
all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall di- 
rect thy paths," and the word of the modern 
prophet, " There is guidance for each of us, and 
by lowly hstening we shall hear the right word," 
are true, and may be realized in the experience of 
any individual who will fulfill the conditions of 
rational living. 



262 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

There will also be naturally developed in one 
who practices the Fellowship principles a com- 
plete Character. Character is the Infinite Order 
expressed through an individual will. It is some- 
thing more than a struggle to fulfill certain 
moral precepts. It is the result of the surrender 
of the individual will to the Universal Purpose. 

It is innate in man and grows to just the ex- 
tent that he realizes himself. It is not a struggle. 
The only struggle is in the attaining of the atti- 
tude of absolute trust. When this is accom- 
plished, character grows as naturally as perfect 
flowers and fruits. " The fruit of the Spirit is 
love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, 
goodness, faith, meekness, self-control." 

Out of this Knowledge and Wisdom and 
Goodness, grows Serenity. This attitude and 
practice is serenity. But as one lives this divine 
life in the flesh. Serenity deepens into Peace. 

Beyond Serenity lies Joy, by which I mean 
the high bliss of being one with the heart of all 
that is, and entering in an ecstatic realization, in 
unity with the objects and processes of creation, 
and with all the possible experiences of life. 



LIFE, AND 263 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Beyond this li^s Power. I mean power to live 
a satisfactory life. Knowledge, Wisdom, Char- 
acter, Serenity and Joy are Power. This in- 
cludes material and physical well-being. I do 
not mean to say that every individual who lives 
according to these principles will always be 
physically perfect or materially rich, but I do 
mean to say that he will find that if he seeks 
first this kingdom of love, and the righteousness 
of the trustful life, he will realize that all things 
desirable to his present condition are being added 
unto him, and will so work in harmony with the 
great forces and objects that touch his existence, 
as to develop almost illimitable power for his 
own greater development and influence for the 
world's upbuilding. 

This gospel is not alone an individual one, but 
has also social implications of the widest char- 
acter. The social gospel is The Dawn of a New 
Spiritual Era. The gospel of Jesus was, " The 
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." This is vastly 
more true to-day than in the age when this great 
teacher was on earth. Men to-day are doing the 
works which He did, and " greater works," ac- 



264 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

cording to His prophecy. The marvelous ad- 
vances in the material world are of inestimable 
spiritual significance. We know all lands and 
all peoples. We have analyzed our world and 
other worlds. We are making use of finer and 
more potent forces in carrying on the world's 
work by such agencies as steam and electricity 
and the powers contained in the atmosphere. 
God at last has seen fit to trust men with wings. 
The progress and prevalence of pure and genu- 
ine political democracy, the world-wide move- 
ment for international peace, the perceiving of 
the principles of universal religion, all herald the 
coming of such a human day as has never yet 
been known. The fact that we can conceive the 
social program hereinafter outlined and can 
give ourselves to this realization is itself an indi- 
cation of this great day which is dawning. 
VI. The Social Program. 

1. The Entire Consecration of the Individual 
to the general welfare. Nothing can take the 
place of this. It must be definite and irrevocable. 

2. The Practice of patient and persistent 
Trust and Unselfishness in Domestic Life. The 



LIFE, AND 265 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

world is not yet oid enough so that any man can 
rationally dogmatize concerning the develop- 
ment of the family ideal, but it seems to me that 
if there is one conception that has come to the 
most intelligent portion of the race by direct 
illumination, and that has been proven right in 
the upward progress of mankind, it is the value 
of the marriage of one man to one woman, and 
of all the great school of life for husband and 
wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters 
and relatives thus brought into existence. The 
practical recognition of the essential character 
of marriage and of the home as rooted in eternal 
principle, would solve a large portion, if not all, 
of our domestic troubles, and would shed light 
on all the vexed problems of society. 

3. Education as the development of Character 
by the appeal to the soul. By character I mean 
living the life herein described. Our children 
are instructed and trained in almost everything 
except this. All their teachings should be from 
the moral standpoint, the development of self- 
reliance, of trust and unselfishness. There is no 
study which they ought to pursue and no recrea- 



266 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

tion in which they should indulge that should 
not have this aim. By the appeal to the soul, I 
mean the true education, or drawing out of the 
innate powers, rather than cramming the mind 
with all sorts of alleged facts ; and while I do not 
disparage all forms of mental discipline that 
really add to the skill with which one may use 
his mind, above and beyond this lies the power 
that comes from the recognition of the vast re- 
sources of the human soul and a distinct appeal 
to the innate potentialities. 

4. Social Equality. By this I do not mean 
that people should be associated with one another 
in the most intimate relationships who are not 
naturally congenial, but that the essential broth- 
erhood of every member of the human family 
should be recognized in the same way that we 
recognize the ties of relationship between mem- 
bers of the lesser families. We should shrink 
from association with no human being in any 
relationship that may be indicated as desirable 
for them and for us, by the natural conditions of 
our lives. 

5. Loving Ministry to the Unfortunate. The 



LIFE, AND 267 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

world needs not sg much palliative charity as the 
remedial justice of love, and yet while we are 
still in the condition of making, so far as uni- 
versal brotherhood is concerned, it is necessary 
and desirable for those who have an abundance 
of worldly goods and of wisdom to minister to 
those who have need, without discrimination as 
regards character, except as this may indicate 
the wisest method of ministry, and always bear- 
ing in mind the abolition of such conditions as 
produce poverty, disease and other causes of 
human distress. 

6. The Enactment and Administration of 
civil and criminal Laws on the Fraternal basis. 
As the world is now constituted, it is not possible 
for men to live sanely without sometimes using 
physical force in the attempt to properly adjust 
social relationships. We have grown a long dis- 
tance, however, in civilization, when our reliance 
is no more upon violence for the adjustment of 
human differences, but upon the appeal to rea- 
son. The trouble is not so much in the use of 
force as in the spirit in which we use it. Nine- 
teen-twentieths of the work of our courts would 



LIFE, AND 
LOVE, AND PEACE 

be done away with if we lived in a brotherly fash- 
ion as regards the relationships that concern 
property, and a very large proportion of the ad- 
ministration of criminal law would be unneces- 
sary if we did what we could in the recognition 
of the salvabihty of every man and woman, and 
of our application to give ourselves for the free- 
ing of our fellows from moral bondage. When 
our civil laws are enacted as the expression of an 
enlightened unselfishness, and we make our crim- 
inal laws and administer them so as to entirely 
lose the conception of crime and to recognize 
every individual as a genuine brother or sister, 
it will not be long before our courts will be hoUer 
institutions than our churches now are, and our 
prisons will be transformed into asylums and 
schools for the regeneration of morally delin- 
quent men and women. 

7. The Abolition of Institutionalized Immor- 
ality, such as the saloon and all forms of gam- 
bling. In our democratic society, all liberty 
should be given to the individual consistent with 
the welfare of society itself. To legally commit 
the state to the tolerance of the open saloon and 



LIFE, AND 269 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

to any method of obtaining wealth that necessi- 
tates the pauperization of any element in the 
community, is to deny the solidarity of mankind 
and to use the vast educative power of our in- 
stitutions for demoralization. The saloon must 
go, and with it all the organized corruption, im- 
purity and social evil, now tolerated by our civil 
laws and social customs. 

8. The use of land and natural resources for 
the benefit of all, rather than a few, of the people. 
There are those who claim that all our social im- 
perfection arises from the withholding access to 
the land in his own right from the ordinary man, 
and the exploitation of the natural riches of the 
world by the few at the expense of the many. 
Whether it is true or not, that all injustice would 
be banished and equal opportunity given to all 
men by a just distribution of the land, it is cer- 
tain that a large part of our prevalent poverty, 
with its consequent miseries and crimes, would 
be abolished if the land were socially owned and 
occupied by those who would put it to the best 
use. No true lover of his kind can refrain from 
doing all in his power to overcome the vast in- 



270 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

iquities essential to our present unbrotherly 
usage of the abundant natural resources of our 
mother earth. 

9. Economic Co-operation. We have been 
learning the lessons of the value of co-opera- 
tion in production, and the time has arrived 
for the application of the same principles 
in the distribution of wealth. Our present 
system of economics is largely planless and 
hopeless and loveless, and denies every funda- 
mental principle of fellowship. We know a bet- 
ter way, and, by individual endeavor, by volun- 
tary economic co-operation and by the organiza- 
tion of the larger Co-operative Commonwealth, 
we should give ourselves, completely and unself- 
ishly, to the production of this nobler economic 
society. As Frances Willard well said: "Who- 
ever speaks of competition, breathes out a curse 
upon the race, and whoever speaks of co-opera- 
tion breathes out a blessing." And while we are 
establishing this nobler form of association, let 
all economic disputes be adjusted peaceably, by 
arbitration. 

10. Political Democracy. " The history of the 



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LOVE, AND PEACE 

world for six thousand years has been the history 
of the progress of Democracy." In these later 
days the growing genius and experience of the 
race has devised almost perfect methods, by 
which the people's will may be ascertained and 
registered and administered. The rather forbid- 
ding words of the Initiative and Referendum 
and Recall are holy expressions, denoting the cul- 
mination of the wisdom of the ages and the larger 
inspiration of the present, in political science. 
Let all the people familiarize themselves with 
their far-reaching significance and regard it as 
truly sacramental a duty to provide their intro- 
duction and efficiency as any sacred rite was ever 
esteemed by the most earnest devotee. The 
prophet-patriot Mazzini's words are largely true : 
"Whoever makes a religion out of democracy 
will save the world." The religion of democ- 
racy is a necessary inference from the fact of 
the divinity of man. 

11. International Arbitration and Mutual 
Service. The promotion of World-wide Peace 
by peaceful methods. These statements are their 
own argument. Nothing now hinders the final 



272 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

peace of the world except the selfish blindness of 
those whose so-called selfish interests prevent 
their faith in man. But in spite of all the reac- 
tionary forces, the cause of international peace 
has made more progress in the past fifteen years 
than in all the previous ages of human history. 
Let us now forever definitely abandon the fool- 
ish and deadly notion that any body of men are 
or can, in any essential sense, be 'Our enemies, and 
give ourselves to a war against war, and the de- 
mand for the application of the same laws of 
reason and mutual service among nations which 
we now recognize as essential to the well-being 
of individuals in a civiUzed society. Let us never 
be carried away by any terror or anger or child- 
ish enthusiasm over battleships or national ^prow- 
ess or violence, but strive to be worthy of the 
great benediction: "Blessed are the peace- 
makers, for they shall be called the children of 
God." 

12. Inter-racial Brotherhood. The world has 
become one city. We begin to see that only a 
sophomoric and stupendous conceit can justify 
the claims of any race of people to be wholly 



LIFE, AND 273 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

superior to any other. No one race can be made 
perfect without the virtues of every other or 
without the universal fellowship of all the chil- 
dren of men. 

Darkness will cover the earth, until we learn 
the lesson of universal brotherhood. Away with 
racial prejudice! By our practice and our testi- 
mony, let us stand fearlessly and lovingly for 
the unity of mankind. 

13. Universal Sjnnpathy, including the ani- 
mals. Oun word philanthropy is a relatively 
smaU word, if taken in the sense of its derivation. 
It Kterally means the love of man. That is great 
in its place, but is only the introduction to the 
greater love which embraces every living creature 
and aU that exists in the cosmic scheme. 

The animals need our love and help, and look 
up to us as though we were their gods. We reply 
to their prayers by our unspeakable cruelties, 
for the sake of pandering to our fleshly appe- 
tites, our convenience, our temporary comfort, 
our depraving pleasures, our imwholesome ex- 
citements and our foolish vanity, as well as even 
in the holy name of science. Neither they with- 



274, LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

out US, nor we without them, shall be made per- 
fect, and the consunmiation for them and for us 
awaits the expression of universal sympathy, 
" the Manifestation of the children of God." 

14. The Beautifying of the World. God 
" plants the rose of beauty on the brow of chaos, 
and discloses that the central intention of Na- 
ture is harmony and joy." It is for man to be 
a worker together with God in the adornment of 
his world. Not that man alone is a great public 
servant, who makes two blades of grass grow 
where one grew before, but also he who banishes 
deformity and creates beauty of form and deco- 
ration. The grimy hand of greed has beslimed 
our hideously constructed cities, until we have 
builded many grotesque monstrosities for the 
workhouses and the dwelling houses of men. 

Let us learn that work without art is ignoble 
and give ourselves to build and adorn all our 
human structures with the strength and majesty 
of the eternal hills and the grace and glory of 
the palaces of the clouds. 

VII. The Dynamic. I have already referred 
to this under other headings. 



LIFE, AND 275 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Man has not universal power, because he does 
not give himself to the Universal Will. If he 
could work " miracles " now, he would wreck the 
universe. But we can conceive of man so devel- 
oped by the trustful and loving hfe that Power 
should naturally seek him for its channel and 
he should " go forth through Universal Love to 
Universal Power." The Holy Spirit is the 
Whole Spirit, and the man who gives himself 
absolutely to the hfe herein portrayed, will be a 
dynamic man in whom the prophecy will be ful- 
filled : " Yc shall receive Power after that the 
Holy Spirit is come upon you." As fast as we 
reahze this ideal and conform our Uves " to the 
pure idea in our mind," we may expect our world 
to change accordingly, until "the kingdom of 
man over nature, — a dominion such as is now 
beyond his dream of God, — ^he shall enter with- 
out more wonder than the bhnd man feels, who 
is gradually restored to perfect sight." 

All that we do shall be done by the Construc- 
tive Method. It may be necessary to tear down 
an old structure in order to erect a better one, or 
to grub out the desert yuccas in order to plant 



276 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

oranges, but in every department our lives may 
be lived and our work accomplished with such an 
aim and spirit that all men must bear witness 
that we are not come to destroy, but to fulfill. 
Where it is possible, let us criticise only "by 
creation," and always and under all circum- 
stances act in the spirit of our great motto, the 
pregnant question, the answer to which answers 
all other questions : " What is the loving thing 
to do?" 

And, furthermore, let us hold all our opinions 
and do all our deeds with a " forward look, in 
the Spirit of progress." " We are with to-day as 
against yesterday and with to-morrow as against 
to-day," 

We do not present this as the final Word of 
God. There is yet new light to break. But we 
do present it as the first rational synthesis of re- 
ligion that touches life and experience at all 
points, that our world has yet known. In this 
fact lies the second significance of the use of the 
word Revelation. It is not some supernatural 
statement concerning the origin and destiny of 
man, but it is a clear, comprehensive outline of 



LIFE, AND 277 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

thought and conduct that needs only to be com- 
prehended and practiced to inspire every indi- 
vidual and to actualize the ideal, which would 
establish the Kingdom of Love on Earth. 

The great characteristic of noble Hves, Loy- 
alty, has been freely bestowed on men and books 
and institutions and dogmas. They have all pos- 
sessed virtues and have bred them in their dev- 
otees. But this call is to loyalty, to supreme 
principles, and to a " Great Cause, God's New 
Messiah," which could not triumph without 
bringing peace and prosperity for all the chil- 
dren of men. 

When Coleridge was asked if he could prove 
the truth of Christianity, he said, " Yes; try it! " 
So with even better warrant, say we of The Fel- 
lowship. 

This is a message to head and heart and hand, 
and this is a call to enlightened men and women 
of all nations, to such as have outgrown the an- 
cient dogmas, to those in doubt and darkness, to 
those in the older churches and religions who are 
looking for larger light and liberty and love and 
power, to those who have never been devotees of 



278 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

any form of religious faith, and to all the bound 
and oppressed of the world. " Come with us 
and we will do thee good! " " Come with us and 
be eyes for us! " 

We can coMjeive of nothing greater or better 
than the name Fellowship^ but we care nothing 
for names, and under this name or some other 
these principles will possess the earth. 



APPENDIX V 

AT-ONE-MENT 

T, HE thought of this book is finding clearer 
and more positive expression every day, 
showing that it is not the mere dream of an en- 
thusiast or of a visionary. As this book goes to 
press there comes in Brotherhood, pubhshed at 
Letchworth, the " Garden City," of Herts, Eng- 
land, an article mainly from the pen of W. 
Winslow Hall, M. D., which reflects much of 
its message. With some alterations, intended 
only to make the message plainer, it is reprinted 
here. 

REASON FOR JOY, JOY, JOY! 

The universe, with all its variety, is a Unity. 

Whatever the shifting appearances may be, 
which are seen so variously by individuals from 
their various standpoints, true and thorough 
monotheists, who believe in one God logically 
and consistently, recognize one only real Power. 



280 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

This One Power is certainly not evil. Else 
there could be nowhere any good. 

Nor is this One Power good with the limited 
kind of goodness we little creatures think of, 
when we imagine good striving against evil and 
bounded by evil. For if the real nature of the 
world consisted of good and evil set over against 
each other, this would not be the reign of One 
Power "over all, through all, and in all," but 
the warfare of two powers. The spectacle of 
good and evil opposing each other is the appear- 
ance of things from our point of view in time 
and space — a point of view which, as the specta- 
tor ascends, will be left behind for ever. 

The goodness of the One Power — the eternal, 
the infinite — goes beyond and excels the best we 
novices at our stage of time and space can im- 
agine. The One Power is bringing forth a 
reconciliation, an at-one-ment, a unity — a fulfil- 
ment that is more than a triumph of good over 
evil. It is an unbounded and perpetual good, 
satisfying for ever. 

Nothing else than this confidence — ^this expec- 
tation of beautiful surprises which mil outdo the 



LIFE, AND 281 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

best ideals of e^^en our most luminous hours — is 
perfect faith in the One God, Father Almighty. 

Everything that is created, so far as can be 
judged from its highest results, is a means of 
producing, developing, ripening and exercising 
mind that shall understand it, and shall there- 
fore co-operate with it in attaining further 
growth. It is actually creating and clearing our 
consciousness, what we might call awareness, and 
calling out the corresponding purposeful activ- 
ity. It has produced, and is constantly produc- 
ing, personal self-consciousness, the "I am" 
consciousness; and already here and there it is 
expanding and illuminating this to a triumphant 
and overmastering "cosmic consciousness." 

From the point of view of disciples of Jesus, 
the universe may be said to exist for bringing 
forth the Christ-consciousness; by which we 
mean the quality of mind that was developed in 
Jesus as a preparation and equipment for his 
singular ministry, that quality of mind that 
grew in him more and more, and spread from 
him to others. This was the mind whereby he 
realised more and more the two-fold unity ex- 



282 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

pressed in the two grand climaxes of religion in 
the Fourth Gospel: "I and the Father are 
one," and " Ye are in me and I in you," 

The Christ-consciousness is the highest result 
that has appeared to the human race, and is 
therefore the best interpretation of the universal 
purpose. The universe exists for nothing less 
than reconciling, harmonizing and unifying con- 
sciousness everywhere; — for the glow and radi- 
ance of the all-present God realised through all 
intelligences. Every soul is destined to become, 
as knowledge and realisation of the truth dis- 
sipates its illusions, a centre of that joyous con- 
cordant consciousness ; and thereby shall all souls 
be organized into a consciously co-operative fel- 
lowship. It is not merely that we are meant to 
be sane of mind and sound of body, as people 
ordinarily count sanity and health; not merely 
to be properly fed, clothed, and housed; not 
merely to be comfortable and secure; all which 
conditions, of course, our Father knoweth that 
we have need of. It is that we are meant to 
know ourselves and one another as free children 
of God, joint-heirs and joint-owners of all 



LIFE, AND 283 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

things with him who said "All that the Father 
hath is mine." 



All mere things must wax and wane ; in finite 
straits and bays the tides of infinite Being must 
alternately surge and ebb; bird-like, our em- 
bodied soul must cover and drowse as well as 
wing and sing. After each activity must reoc- 
cur a season of passivity. But the soul, divin- 
ing how remedial reaction is, does not murmur 
or despair. It makes the hard-won height a 
base for higher flights. It rests in God; and 
patiently, yet confidently, waits. It knows that 
now is its appointed nurture time ; and therefore, 
in a huge content, it quietly receives, or as we 
say, " it acquiesces." 

Such experience is both usual and natural 
when souls ascend in prayer. Indeed, this 
quietude is felt by most men to be a higher 
mood than thanksgiving. It may not be so no- 
table, or so attractive; but it gives tint and tone 
to every hfe it blends with. Not that it is, or 
ever has been, a uniform feeling, universally 
felt. The type of acquiescence varies even as in- 



284 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

dividual souls vary. Four great forms of it 
can be defined and observed in every-day life. 

There is, first, an acquiescence which, to many, 
seems despair. It recognizes that the world is 
illusion, that the world is change, that the world 
is woe; moreover, that desire alone can link the 
soul to the elusive, woeful fraud. Therefore, 
says this formative type of acquiescence, 
must the desire be shattered. Appetites must 
give way to affections ; affections must give way 
to aspirations; even aspirations must at last be 
quenched in the final acquiescence. There must 
be denial of the lower self, time after time, un- 
til the slowly highering self has become one with 
that which includes all things. Now this devel- 
opment, though seemingly so sad, is not despair. 
For it teaches that even sorrow is illusion, that 
even sorrow is subject to change, and that sor- 
row, therefore, will inevitably pass. From height 
to height the soul will rise. The coarser pleas- 
ures must give place to finer joys. No limit can 
be set to this ascent. And thus the casting-out 
of what seemed hope has really been the bring- 
ing-in of a deeper, a fairer, an everlasting hope. 



LIFE, AND 285 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Then there is that type of acquiescence which 
is glorified endurance. The soul feels that all 
things are more or less evil; and that, for some 
unknown reason, it must always combat those 
evils. And it finds its one good in its own 
strength, in its own ability to bear the worst that 
evil can inflict, in the joy of battle, in the buoy- 
ant rallying after every blow. This creed may 
seem to be pessimistic in its outlook on the vast 
external world: it is always optimistic in its as- 
sertion of the pure, unconquerable Me. The 
soul stands alone against the universe; but it 
knows that it can always hold its own. It 
feels that in itself is the Highest; and that, for 
itself, the triumph of the Highest over the lower 
is reward enough ! What all this conflict means, 
what all this effort leads to — these are dark, un- 
answered questions. Nothing is clear but that 
one must endure; nothing can satisfy but suc- 
cessful endurance. 

Out of the night that covers me. 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 



ggg LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 

I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 

My head is bloody, but unbow'd. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 

Looms but the horror of the shade. 
And yet the menace of the years 

Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 
I am the Master of my fate; 
I am the Captain of my soul. 

Henley.* 

Again there is the type of acquiescence which, 
while still convinced that the world is evil and 
that evil must be endured, is content to endure 
it for a season, trusting to be rewarded by an 
eternity of joy. In this case the external world 

*One of these lines — delightfully pagan — seems to have been 
first penned by Swinburne, who also, in a most memorable short 
poem, thanks — 

Whatever gods there be 
That dead men rise up never, 
That e'en the longest river 
Winds somewhere safe to sea. 



LIFE, AND 287 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

is never held to be altogether evil; for, though 
that lesser part of it which is known as this 
world is evil and must inflict suffering on the 
soul and must be endured, yet that greater part 
of it which is known as God, is good. For though 
He inflicts, by means of the world those long, 
vast, sufferings which a soul must bear, yet He 
does it all with perfect wisdom and with perfect 
love. His aim is to mould, to discipline, to ripen, 
for an after-Hf e of uneventful bliss. Therefore 
though such a soul's view of the world is pessi- 
mistic, yet its view of itself and of God is opti- 
mistic. Though it regards the Now as an evil, 
it looks forward to the Then as a more than 
counter-balancing good. It is content to suffer 
when it understands that only through brave suf- 
fering can joy be gained. 

Lastly, there is the type of acquiescence which 
refuses to acknowledge any evil. For it the Me 
is good: the whole of what is outside "me" is 
also good. Indeed, the Me and the Not-me, far 
from being opposed, are felt to be one. What 
seems to be separation is illusion. What seems 
to be suffering is illusion. TJie universe is an 



288 LIFE, AND 

LOVE. AND PEACE 

eternal Progress. The soul, which is part of the 
universe, is, and must be for ever, in a state of 
change. Even God, of whom the universe is 
part, is evermore evolving. And, for universe, 
for soul, for God, the Progress is a becoming 
better and better. Therefore, when realities are 
understood, the Now is as joyful as any Then 
can ever be: all the bliss a soul can ever experi- 
ence is open to it now: just as fast as a soul de- 
velops larger capacities for blessedness, just so 
fast will higher blessedness flood into it. There- 
fore the soul submits to all its earthly conditions, 
not because it must, but because it wants to. 
Things may seem bad, but they are really good. 
The scheme of the universe is joyfully accepted; 
the soul makes itself one with the Whole; it re- 
fuses to be spared suffering, or to forgo tri- 
umph; it is keen to bear all with God and to en- 
joy all with God. 

Well, these four modes of acquiescence are 
variously useful and admirable. Each has its 
own value for differing types of soul. But 
here, as elsewhere, we see development; and it 
seems that the last is the highest of the four. 



LIFE, AND 289 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

Then the practical question arises : How can 
this joyous acquiescence, this rapturous prefer- 
ence, this enthusiastic harmony, be achieved? 
And the answer is not far to seek. It is two- 
fold. There must be, first, a mental under- 
standing of the unity of the universe in God. 
There must be, secondly, an absolute giving-up 
of one's separate will to God's will. 

Now, these two things are easily said, but they 
are not easily done. The first, indeed, is the less 
difficult. For, in these days when all our sci- 
ences and creeds come together and blend and 
lighten into Monism, the belief in the Unity of 
all things, an intellectual grasp of the real one- 
ness of all things in God is not hard to attain. 
But hard it always has been, and hard it still is, 
to give up our separate will. However clearly 
we may see that we ought to do it, however fer- 
vently we may long to do it, however truly we 
may try to do it, our experience is that we can 
not do it. We want our own way in this, or 
that, or the other affair; and thus, not getting 
our own way, we are miserable; or again, 
getting our own way (which is the wrong way) 



290 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

we are even more miserable. So the continual 
struggle between the Prince of Light and the 
Power of Darkness goes on in us. With such 
a civil war how can there be peace? One must 
give way. And, although the lower may ap- 
pear to triumph for a time, yet that ignoble vic- 
tory is never lasting. Unremarked the higher 
gathers strength once more. Warfare breaks out 
afresh, and more bitterly than ever. Sooner or 
later the higher must prevail; and then, and not 
till then, our peace is gained. Some perception 
of this inevitable ending may shorten the battle: 
the lower may lay down its arms. 

Yet the more common and more final victory 
lies in a perception on the part of our higher 
nature that it can, and must, enlist the help of 
the Highest. For our higher nature at its best 
is too finite, too fleeting, too foolish, of itself to 
conquer and to rule. But it has the saving fac- 
ulty, the neglected yet invincible resource, of 
joining forces with the Highest. It finds 'that 
it can draw at will, in very need, on infinite 
eternal and almighty power. And it finds that 
with God all is possible. 

Yet more must follow. For such acquiescence 



LIFE, AND 291 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

grows into a stijl rarer phase of the ascent, into 
what may be fitly styled At-one-ment. The soul 
has become so thoroughly convinced of the 
power, the wisdom and the love of God, that it 
lives in an unhesitating, unswerving obedience to 
the Universal Law. So far as it can discern 
God's will, such a soul gladly substitutes that for 
the will of the separate self. Its loftiest ambi- 
tion is to be a tool of God; its noblest art is a 
concord with the beauty which is God; its keen- 
est intellectual delight is sharing in the thoughts 
of God; its deepest and warmest and most abid- 
ing affection is called forth by friend, or kin, 
or wife, or child, who reveal the love ever stream- 
ing towards it from God ; its essence is felt to be 
not only a part of God who is all things, but 
also an evidence of God who is the Highest. 

There lies open to the soul a yet further phase 
of acquiescence. At-one-ment leads insensibly to 
that most quiet yet energetic rapture known as 
receptivity. But happily for us (considering 
how soon our powers flag), striving is not al- 
ways necessary. When we rise to receptivity 
nought is needed but a willing passiveness. It 
requires but a quiet resting in the Spirit, a hum- 



202 LIFE, AND 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

ble readiness to be held and guided by the Spirit, 
a gladsome confidence that every blessing we can 
utilize will flow into us from the Spirit. To use 
a common simile: whenever we, the electrodes, 
make contact with God, the dynamo, straight- 
way through us flows wondrous, inexhaustible 
force; and lo! our perfect work gets done; the 
utmost that we, as special instruments, can 
achieve, is quietly and finally performed. 

This mood of receptivity is practicable al- 
ways. Even during the day, when busied in 
work, or slackened in the pauses of work, the 
soul may so expatiate; but absolute receptivity 
must ever be most attainable during the nightly 
miracle of sleep. For then, as we lie down, we 
can cast ourselves into the Everlasting Arms and 
yield ourselves wholly to the Spirit's influence; 
praying for and yearning for such an influx 
of energy and love into our subconscious selves 
as shall, first, expel all baser qualities, and then, 
in daily gradual emergence, mould our activities 
to be indeed an accurate and full expression of 
God's will. Thus the Spirit will come to be the 
mainspring of all our lives, the vital air that we 



LIFE, AND 293 

LOVE, AND PEACE 

habitually breathe — yea, the deepest self in our 
selves, the very soul of Soul. 

Such and so varied and so fruitful an ac- 
quiescence has been experienced by men through- 
out all the ages, and this they have taught. Brah- 
min and Hebrew, poet and cobbler, Quaker and 
Romanist, emperor and mendicant, all agree in 
this. They have expressed it in many different 
ways, but the underlying fact is one and com- 
mon and invariable. Not my separate will hut 
the Universal will he done — that is the kernel 
of religion, that is the secret of peace. When 
once achieved there can be no more doubt, or 
fear, or failure ; no more gloom, or sin, or death. 
Life becomes radiant and easy. Confidence, con- 
tent and joy have brimmed the cup until the cup 
overflows. Heaven is known to be, not a future 
possibility, but a present reality, not an aimless 
idling, but a helpful doing, not a pool of benev- 
olence, but a mill-race of beneficence, not a 
sensuous rapture, but a spiritual fervour, not a 
servitude, but mastery, not pleasure, not even 
happiness, but Blessedness. 



FIVE OTHER BOOKS 

BY ;30LT0N HALL 



" Mr. Hall has somehow got a reputation as a radical ; perhaps 
because of his striking way of saying things and his determina- 
tion to be heard; but his ' radicalism ' is rapidly being adopted 
by conservatives. He was one of the earliest practical Tax Re- 
formers and the present Tax Reform Association is his work: 
he was a ' back to the land ' locomotive before that cry was 
known. Like his ' Single Tax instead of Socialism,' his radical- 
ism is tempered by a saving common sense." 

A LITTLE LAND AND A LIVING 

Shows what can be done with a little piece of land, and how 

those who are unfit for the city struggle may make a living from 

the soil; that agriculture if carried on along intensive lines is 

profitable. A Message of good cheer to the discouraged. 

THINGS AS THEY ARE 

This collection of essays and parables sets forth with a " mer- 
ciless sweetness of spirit " the intellectual and moral entangle- 
ments that result from a misunderstanding of the Common Prin- 
ciples of life. They will not only be read and remembered, but 
unconsciously incorporated into the life of the reader. 

MONEY MAKING IN FREE AMERICA 

The clearest, most incisive analysis of the methods of fortune- 
building in this country that has ever appeared. It is plain in its 
reasoning, just in its conclusions and interesting in its style. A 
book for the man who is rich and the man who hopes to be; for 
the man who would rather think harder than work harder. 

THE GAME OF LIFE 

This is a collection of parables grave and gay which have been 
published in " Life," " Collier's " and other magazines. The 
Game as it is played, with all its possibilities, is set out in an 
inimitable fashion. Everyone who is interested in, or has been 
puzzled by the muddle of life will find in this volume just what 
applies to the failings of his friends. 

THE SEEMS SO STORIES 

A book that the child will make his own. and from which the 
adult will get many a silent lesson. The little stories deal with 
the things a child knows in a way that a child understands. The 
children ask to have those stories read, over and over again. 

300 pages, cloth, 12 mo $1.00 

THE ARCADIA PRESS, 
150 NASSAU ST.. NEW YORK 



JUN 15 1909 



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